Meitantei Scramble
by MewShiny
Summary: After an odd heist it seems something strange has happened to the Gosho Boys. Kaito is solving murders, Conan's speaking Osaka-ben, Heiji has a British accent and has become punctual and calm, and Hakuba seems to be moonlighting as a certain phantom thief... Just what is going on? Will the four of them be able to cope with the change? Will they ever return to normal? Maybe!
1. AHHHHCHOOOO

**MUSHI MUSHI! GUYS! This is Kira-chan with another weird story! The opening seems kinda pointless but this story has a lot of potential for awkwardness, so I really hope you enjoy it!  
**

**Disclaimer: Conan's been going on since before I was alive... If I owned it I'd have to go through a time warp or something, that hasn't happened yet but I'll be sure to let you guys know if it does.  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

The moonlight magician, international thief 1412, the magician of the silver sky, Kaitou Kid was not feeling well that night.

However, he'd already sent out the heist notice days in advance and was not in the mood to retreat as he had already seen his favorite pursuers were present. Hakuba Saguru, Edogawa Conan (a.k.a. Kudo Shinichi), and Hattori Heiji (though he seemed to be more interested in watching the child detective than in chasing Kaitou Kid himself) had all arrived and appeared to be ready to chase after everyone's favorite phantom thief.

Upon seeing the meitantei's determined looks Kid couldn't help but chuckle a bit, though afterward his chuckle he couldn't suppress a sneeze.

He'd been feeling like this ever since a certain creepy witch had sneezed a curse at him in homeroom, though he didn't feel cursed, he assumed that worst case scenario he had a cold. Oh, how wrong he was.

Despite his foul condition the thief still managed to outwit and outrun the entire Kaitou Kid Task Force, leaving the now somewhat winded thief alone on the roof with his three meitantei pursuers.

The white-clad phantom thief hid his apparent sickness well with his usual smiling poker face, but Edogawa Conan and Hakuba Saguru had noticed that he was slightly more pale than usual and his movements were also slower. It was the two of them that approached him hesitantly for fear that the thief's sickly appearance may be a trap, and Hattori Heiji followed closely behind.

It was at that moment that the thief -unable to hold back any longer- let loose an amazing sneeze, so powerful that the sheer force of it nearly knocked the three meitantei back.

And _that_, is how this strange occurrence was set into motion.

…

When I woke up the next morning I didn't immediately notice that anything was wrong. It wasn't a school day so it wasn't strange at all that Ran hadn't woken me up, and with my eyes still bleary from sleep I didn't realize that I wasn't in the room that Mouri-ojisan and I shared.

Yawning, I stood up and headed to the bathroom for obvious reasons, when I happened to pass by a mirror.

_Hmm... my hair's a mess, I'd better comb it before I go eat breakfast... _I thought groggily. After turning away from the mirror I frowned as my mind cleared and I began to process what I'd just seen, I did a double take.

_No way? I'm back in my teenage body? I've gone back to being Shinichi?_

It took only a moment longer to register that I was in a completely unfamiliar house, and only a little after that did I realized that I had a much bigger problem.

The hair wasn't the only issue, my eyes were also a slightly more violet tone than my usual sapphire blue, looking carefully I noticed a good number of other differences that I'd missed in my initial excitement at finding myself a teenager once again. Though, admittedly the appearance was shockingly similar, there was only one person I could think of that had such a similar appearance to mine.

My conclusion: this was not my body. For some reason overnight I had become _someone_ besides 'Kudo Shinichi' or 'Edogawa Conan', and that 'someone' was likely the true identity of Kaitou Kid.

…

When I woke up that morning I immediately realized that something was wrong -yeah, I was a step ahead of Kudo- only because I woke to find myself staring at my own sleeping face.

I blinked several times. It was still there, definitely not a mirror either.

I managed to keep myself from shouting in horror and did the more detective-like thing to do, I investigated.

Well I say 'investigated' but really all I did was look down at myself then look at the 'me' that I was looking at before, I quickly went to find a mirror, panicking internally.

_Holy Crap! I'm Kudo... er Conan, I'm Conan! What de heck is goin' on? _

_It's jus' my imagination right? Dis has got ta be a dream... a practical joke... anythin' but real!_

I tried pinching my -excuse me 'Conan's'- cheek.

"Ow."

Sure enough my 'ow' had come out of the child's mouth in a creepishly childish tone.

Continuing to stare at the mirror I found that 'Conan' mirrored my every move perfectly, when I paired that with the fact that 'I' was asleep on a futon in the other room the only answer was apparent, but I didn't want to believe it.

"Dis Can't Be Happenin'!" I shouted, unable to hold it back any longer.

…

I was woken up by a loud shout in Osaka-ben. That fact alone distracted me to much for me to realize that there was anything wrong with me personally.

I reached for my pocket watch to check the time only to realize that it wasn't there. And that I was not in my bedroom. However I briefly disregarded both of these oddities and headed in the direction of the shout.

When I arrived at the source of the shout I was surprised to find Edogawa-kun staring at himself in the mirror with a look of disbelief muttering curses in Osaka-ben. It was a strange sight indeed.

The child seemed to notice my presence and his expression grew grim. In a very serious but somewhat uncertain tone he suddenly asked, "Kudo? Dat you?"

I didn't understand.

_ Is Edogawa-kun mistaking me for Kudo Shinichi? No that wouldn't make sense, I look nothing like Kudo-kun, and from what I've seen Edogawa-kun always calls Kudo-kun 'Shinichi-niichan'._

It was then that I saw the reflection in the mirror. Edogawa-kun was definitely there but where I should have been was Hattori Heiji.

This raised a few questions, but the only applicable answers were ridiculous at best.

...

I woke up to the sound of tantei-san's baaya telling her 'bocchama' to wake up or else breakfast would get cold. Upon hearing that I instantly could tell that something was wrong.

The reason being that I'd fallen asleep at my own house at there was really no reason that I should wake up in Tantei-san's room. Although I was pretty glad to see that I'd gotten over my cold.

I was able quickly realize what was wrong; for some reason I'd become Tantei-san. Resisting the urge to scream, I put on my best poker face and pretended to be Hakuba Saguru with all my might.

While I quietly ate Tantei-san's breakfast I wondered what I should be doing about this situation. It occurred to me that if I was in Tantei-san's body... where was he, and what had happened to _my_ body? So I made my decision to go visit my house in order to discern what had happened to 'me'.


	2. Identity Crisis

**Since this story is mostly meant to just be funny, sure the begining is kind of serious but once the detectives have all gotten over their denying reality bit I'm going to try and make it really funny.  
**

** I hope you don't mind that there will probably be some ooc moments... especially for Hakuba, I've never written him before and he rarely ever shows up so it's hard to tell if he even has a distinct personality. Kaito is a bit ooc in this chapter too, but don't worry he'll be his normal class clown self and freaking out about fish in no time ^v^  
**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Conan there would have been a supernatural or psychological development by now... besides the awkward situation and pseudo-supernatural powers some characters seem to posses  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Having no desire to go out in public with my hair a total mess I did my best to arrange the stranger's hair into my signature look before heading out to investigate whatever was going on.

I had opened the door to leave the unfamiliar house when I found myself face to face with Hakuba Saguru.

_Crap! Is this person that I've suddenly become for inexplicable reasons friends with Hakuba? What should I do? _

Before I could come up with something casual to say he muttered something under his breath, "Crap... I was hoping it'd just be limited to me and Tantei-san..."

The stupid nickname was what made it click.

"You're Kaitou Kid! Aren't you?"

"I won't deny it... but for the time being it looks like _you _are Kaitou Kid~, Meitantei-kun," he replied, his displeasure showed through his tone but not on his face.

That's when it suddenly hit me.

"So, Hakuba is probably in my body?"

"Who knows," The thief responded, looking as though he wasn't worried at all, "we should probably go check it out. It'd be interesting at least, seeing Chibi Tantei-san that is."

_So I'm a chibi then?_

Unfortunately I had no choice but to agree with the thief -who looked way too relaxed being in Hakuba's body- it really was the best option in the current circumstance to go to the detective agency and see what had happened to my, no,_ Conan_'s body, in fact that's what I had been planning to do before I ran into Hakuba- or rather Kid.

_I'm going to have a headache by the time this is over..._

_...  
_

"GAAAAAAAAAAH I've become Hattori!"

It felt really strange to be looking at my own body while it shouted with a British accent. Well if anything it confirmed that this person wasn't Kudo.

"Calm down, will ya? If ya shout like dat den ya'll wake everyone up!" I responded in a shout/whisper. For some reason I felt really irritated, not just because I was suddenly 'Conan'... there was just something really annoying about the guy that seemed to be in my body.

I realized that the only person I knew with a British accent that would call me 'Hattori' was that annoying half-brit Hakuba Saguru.

"What de hell are _you_ doin' in _my_ body neway?"

"Hmm? Should I take that to mean you are Hattori?" He smiled, but it wasn't a 'oh I get it' smile it was more of a 'oh, this is just too rich' smile, he continued adding a disturbing chuckle at the end, "Well, you've always acted like a child, now you are one."

Suddenly his (or should I say my? It's my handsome face after all) expression changed.

"If I'm in your body... and you're in Edogawa-kun's body... does that mean Edogawa-kun is..." He paused, "BLOODY HELL! Edogawa-kun is probably in _my_ body! I mean sure he's smart but he's only seven! My body will be acting like a seven year old... I'll never live this down..."

His mentality seemed to be deteriorating at a frightening pace, I just didn't have the heart to tell him that the 'seven year old' he was talking about was actually seventeen and smarter than he was.

...

I was panicking.

Yes I found it strange that I'd wound up in that hot-blooded idiot's body, I still had _no idea_ how that was even possible. Yes, I found it strange that Hattori was in Edogawa-kun's body, but that was poetic justice at work. However there was something _horribly_ wrong with the idea that Edogawa-kun might be in my body.

"Jus' shut up. Why don' we go check on yer body an see if it's Ku- ku- ko- Conan?" Hattori (in Edogawa-kun's body) suggested.

As much as I hated to admit it, it was a good idea compared to his usual hopelessly rash ones. I was forced to agree.

But I couldn't help but wonder what he had been about to say before he changed it to 'Conan'. Thinking back on what he'd said when we first discovered this scenario he'd asked if I was 'Kudo' could it be...? No that's impossible, there's no way Edogawa-kun is actually Kudo-kun...then again this entire situation is ridiculous...

Hattori and I headed down the stairs of the detective agency and were about to open the door when we heard people talking on the side. We both fell silent and listened.

"Crap... I don't have a key in this body..."

"No problem, who do you think I am? A lock like this is easy enough to open with out leaving any evidence."

"That's breaking and entering."

"I'm an internationally wanted thief, you think breaking and entering would bother me?"

"Good point."

By this point I was able to recognize both party's voices and decided that it was probably okay to open the door to prevent a crime from occurring.

...

Just as I was about to innocently pick the lock the door swung open and I found what appeared to be Tantei-kun and Tantei-han staring at me.

The person that appeared to be Tantei-han's eyes widened, "Kuroba?"

At the same time the person that appeared to be Tantei-kun had a similar reaction, but instead of 'Kuroba' he said, "Kudo?"

Their reactions made it easy to tell who was who. It was still a bit disturbing to see, but also extremely entertaining.

Meitantei-kun suggested that the four of us go to a nearby park and discuss the current issue, he clearly didn't want to talk about it in the house because both my and his secret identities were going to have to be revealed and it would be better if the Mouri's didn't hear any of that.

I'm sure you can imagine the look of surprise on Hattori's face when Hakuba heard that 'Conan' is actually 'Shinichi Kudo'... it was absolutely priceless, I'd give anything to have seen that expression on Tantei-san's actual face!

"So, until we figure out a way to fix this situation Hattori will have to pretend to be Conan, I will have to pretend to be Kuroba Kaito, He's going to pretend to be Hakuba, and Hakuba will have to pretend to be Hattori," Meitantei-kun summarized, "The biggest issues will be Hattori and Hakuba because of their accents... Hattori can't speak standard Japanese to save his life. Hakuba do you think you could speak in Osaka-ben?"

"I doubt I could use such unrefined language as this hot-blooded fool," Tantei-san replied.

Tantei-han clearly wasn't happy with Tantei-san's choice of wording, "What're ya talkin' 'bout! Osaka-ben is perfec'ly good Japanese!"

Their argument lasted the next few hours, before they realized that it was a completely meaningless argument that would change absolutely nothing. Once everything was settled that we would all act like each other and that I would go talk to 'someone that might be able to help' we parted ways and headed to wherever we were meant to be staying.


	3. Yellow, with lace

**Writing a four-way body swapping story is harder than time travel... It's really hard to decide if I should just have them refer to each other by their bodies or by their minds. In most cases I'll probably use 'mind (body)' as the format for referring to people, especially if they're all in one place but if it's made clear by dialogue or context I'll only put one or the other. I'm only saying all this so I won't confuse you guys, 'kay.**

**In this chapter; we learn some things about what it takes to be a detective, Heiji messes with Haibara, Hakuba sulks (couldn't think of much for him to do, but I didn't want to leave him out...), and Kaito plots. ^_-  
**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Conan I would have more money than I do.  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

The next day I had to go to school as this 'Kuroba Kaito' guy. It helped that Kuroba (or rather Hakuba) was my classmate, but I had no idea how I was supposed to act.

From what Kuroba had told me, and from what I could conclude from inside his room, he was a magician (yeah, already knew he was Kaitou Kid so magician was a given), he's smart but not the type to show it off, he enjoyed pranking his classmates (not going to happen!), and his childhood friend was Nakamori Aoko (whom he called 'Ahoko' ) the daughter of Nakamori-keibu that was always failing to catch Kaitou Kid. I could only deduce that he wasn't by any means a normal person, and was likely mentally insane.

I decided that because I wasn't particularly sure how to act it would be best for me to just act naturally and hope it was close enough, though I seemed to be making everyone in class -especially the girls- wary of me.

For lunch Kuroba and I went up to the roof so we could talk freely, but he seemed to be intent on complaining about my performance. Unfortunately there was nothing I could criticize about his act, I didn't particularly know Hakuba well but from what I saw he was spot on- well Kaitou Kid is known for being able to disguise as anyone, right down to the personality so I guess it was to be expected.

"Come on, Meitantei-kun~ If you don't pull a prank while you're me it'll ruin my reputation!"

I was tempted to ask exactly what kind of reputation he had if he pulled pranks everyday, but decided that I didn't want to know the answer.

"If not pranks, then do a magic trick."

"I don't know any magic tricks..." I replied. I did know a few but not really anything flashy just a few old tricks I learned in case I ever got a case that involved magic tricks.

"Then _at least_ flip up Ahoko's skirt when we get back to the classroom and take a look at her panties, make sure to make some commentary on the color" He replied, "I'd do it myself but it would completely give away the fact that I'm not really Tantei-san."

_So that's the kind of reputation he has?_ I was glad I didn't ask.

"Nakamori-san's panties?" I asked, he looked at me with a 'don't tell me you don't want to know what color they are' type of glare, I continued, "Yellow, with lace."

"That's odd... usually she wears white. How do you know anyway? I've been watching you, did you flip her skirt when I wasn't looking?"

I just smiled, "I'm a _detective_ you know, I can tell with_out_ looking."

"Really?" He seemed honestly surprised by my answer, "I wonder if Tantei-san can do that... you'll have to teach me that trick sometime..."

...

Being in first grade _sucks_. That's all I have to say. It just _sucks_.

I have no idea how Kudo survives. It's amazing he's even kept his _sanity_ after this long. I personally could feel my (His? Conan's?) brain cells committing suicide by the second I sat in class and pretended to be a diligent student.

I pretended that I couldn't talk, because if I did I'd instantly be found out, I just put on a surgical mask like I had a cold and pretended I'd lost my voice. It was rather difficult to keep myself from shouting with joy when the final bell signifying the end of class rang, but I managed somehow.

The only person that seemed to be suspicious at all was that little mad scientist girl, she suspected that something was wrong right away.

"What are you hiding, Kudo-kun?" She'd asked.

She would be one of the few people it'd be safe to tell about this whole body-swapping fiasco, but I wanted to see if I could make her believe that I really was Kudo before I told her that I wasn't. So I silently waved my arms as if to say, 'I'm not hidin' nethin', I really can' lost my voice.'

She looked skeptical, but didn't bother asking again right away, Kudo is pretty stubborn after all.

Later when we'd managed to ditch the other kids she did ask a second time.

This time I replied, trying my hardest to casually speak in Kudo's usual Tokyo-ben, "Nothin', everything's fine."

She raised an eyebrow, "Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

_Crap, she's catching on..._ I tried replying again, this time I added a fake cough hoping to make it convincing, "I'm fine, I've gotta cold s'all."

Her eye's widened a bit before narrowing, "Who are you...!"

"I'll tell ya if ya'll buy me some okonomiyaki," I replied with Kudo's usual victorious grin. Hesitantly, the mad scientist gave in and I helped her find the best okonomiyaki place in Tokyo.

...

Hattori is an idiot. I knew as much before but I hadn't had much actual proof until now.

Even Hattori's childhood friend, Toyama-san, 'Kazuha' as he called her, didn't question it when I said that I was speaking 'Tokyo-ben' because 'Kudo' bet me that I couldn't. No one in the world would have taken on such a stupid bet, but clearly Hattori was so haughty and hot-blooded that he actually would have. He's an idiot in all senses of the word.

I'd have much rather been stuck in Edogawa-kun's body (or should I say Kudo-kun's body, they are the same person after all) at least he's only pretending to not be as smart as he actually is, then Kudo-kun could be in my body, Kuroba could be in Hattori's, and Hattori could take Kuroba's body. It'd have probably have worked out best that way, so why did it have to end up this way?

More importantly how did we wind up body-swapped in the first place, of course it probably had a lot to do with Kid's (or rather Kuroba's, he finally admitted it!) heist, but Kuroba clearly hadn't done it on purpose because if he had he likely wouldn't have gotten himself mixed in so he could protect his secret identity.

All in all this sort of situation shouldn't even be possible, it makes no sense.

...

I must say, Meitantei-kun taught me a lot about being a detective, maybe I should think about trying it sometime -you know, when I'm not in a disguise- I'd be a pretty good cover 'high school detective Kuroba Kaito' secretly Kaitou Kid... just kidding the only good thing about detectives is that they make things fun, and apparently they can tell what kind of underwear a girl is wearing without even looking (I think that's a pretty cool skill).

Seriously though, I thought I'd gotten lucky when the person that wound up in my body was Meitantei-kun; he's the son of a famous actress, and he's somehow managed to convince his not-girlfriend that he's really a seven year old for nearly a year now, so naturally I thought he was a pretty good actor. The truth is his acting sucks, I doubt anyone in class would have believed he was me if it were theoretically possible that he wasn't...

Anyway he managed to correct his acting a bit after lunch. I didn't turn around to look but I could hear him while I walked discreetly from Tantei-san's desk to Akako's.

"So what color do you have today Ahoko?" He said as he nonchalantly bent over and flipped up her skirt, "Oh? So it's yellow? I thought so... but really white suits you much better..."

Of course that began the usual mop chase routine, which he didn't seem to expect but was able to do relatively well, he was probably more used to avoiding his not-girlfriend's karate attacks but dodging seemed to be a skill of his- definitely better than his acting.

But that's not the point. The point is I went to talk to Akako about the current situation.

"Yo, Akako, I..." I trailed off when I saw that she was glaring at me, her face was partially covered by a cold mask.

"What is it, Hakuba-san?" She asked, clearly not in the mood to be talking.

"Actually, it's me, Kaito," I replied. I could see her annoyed gaze shift from me to where Meitantei-kun (in my body in case you've forgotten) was being chased with a mop then back to me, from her expression I could tell she was beginning to question my -or rather Hakuba's- sanity. I added, "Something weird happened at the last heist and me and the meitantei(s) wound up body swapping, you can fix it right?"

She looked as if she was about to do her usual 'oh oh oh oh' laugh, but she probably would have broken down into a fit of coughs if she had. She replied, "That's quite the predicament you've got *cough*... However I won't be able to help, with my body *cough, cough* in this condition... if I were to do any complicated magic... It'd probably backfire...*cough*."

"So... I'm probably going to be stuck like this until you get over your cold?"

"Beats me."

_Well crap. It looks like I'll be stuck as Hakuba for a while... wait a minute, if I pull a heist like this and Meitantei-kun attends as me. My alibi for not being Kid will be perfect!_

My poker face barely suppressed an evil sounding snicker as I plotted for Hakuba's first heist.


	4. Keeping secrets

**In this chapter; Shinichi gets a good idea, Heiji faces the troubles of childhood, Hakuba is annoyed by Kaito, Kaito has _fun_ in Hakuba's body  
**

**Disclaimer: If I owned it then the story wouldn't be near as good.  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Looking in the mirror again I couldn't help but notice just how much Kuroba really did look similar to me, if I just fixed his hair a little bit and put in some colored contacts (he's bound to have some around here, with all the disguises he's used) I could easily pass for 'Kudo Shinichi', even Ran probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Of course Kaito probably wouldn't like it if I did that... but what does it matter anyway, we can just say that he went to travel around the world with his mother for a little bit or something like that.

I figured it would be best to run the idea by Kaito first (mostly because I have no idea where he keeps his colored contacts) so I asked him about it at lunch the next day.

"Can you at least keep being me a little bit longer?" He asked, he obviously had some ulterior motive, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was.

"Why should I?" I asked, "The longer I stay here the more likely someone is to realize you're acting weird, it's only a matter of time before someone suspects I'm not really you and just a look alike instead. Wouldn't it be better if I'm not here?"

He sighed, "I'm going to pull a heist. I wanted you to be there so that there could be undeniable proof that 'Kuroba Kaito' is not Kaitou Kid."

_So he admits it? _

"But you are Kaitou Kid, why should I help you with your alibi?" I asked, "perhaps you've forgotten, but I'm one of the people that was trying to get you caught. You know maybe I should go up to Nakamori-keibu and turn myself in, you'll be in jail for life as soon as this fiasco is over."

"Don't do that!" He said, his usual 'poker face' slipped for just a moment revealing a desperate 'I'll do anything, just don't do that' kind of expression, "I have my reason's for becoming a thief. Um... have you ever heard of Kuroba Touchi? He was my father, and also the original Kaitou Kid, you see eight years ago..."

He told the entire story. His dad was killed... evil organization... revenge... mystical gem Pandora... moonlight... blah blah blah. It was almost as crazy as my whole - shrank by an evil organization that dresses only in black and controls crime from the underworld - story. Actually thinking about it now they could be the same organization, if that's the case I _have_ to help him.

"Fine, but I'll only stick around for long enough to appear as you at the heist..." I sighed.

He smiled, but I couldn't tell if it was real or not. After a moment of silence he suddenly asked, "So what color was it today?"

"White," I replied, "Probably in response to what I said about it suiting her yesterday. You know... she really likes you... a lot."

"Yeah I know that."

Silence.

"...White really does suit her best doesn't it?"

...

The mad scientist had made an expression like she wanted to dissect me when I told her the truth about what happened, fortunately she didn't.

It was now the third day after becoming Conan, and I was happily sleeping in class. Suddenly I had a nightmare and woke up shouting "I Don't Want None Of Yer Soba Noodles, Kudo!"

Yeah... Don't_._ Even. Ask.

It was because I'd shouted like that during class that the shonen tantei dan (that group of kids that Kudo's always hanging out with even though their a pain) realized that I didn't really lose my voice and they also realized that I was speaking strangely -for 'Conan' that is. Thankfully they didn't confront me about it until after class, but man being around Kudo all the time really trained those kids they're starting to actually be pretty good detectives for their age.

"What's wrong Conan-kun? Why were you pretending you couldn't talk?" The little girl called 'Ayumi-chan' asked.

The largest (and thereby most intimidating) one 'Genta' backed her up with his stupidity, "Yeah, what's the big idea, Conan?"

"No reason... really," I replied, making sure to use words that were the same in Osaka-ben and Tokyo-ben.

"Oh? But there must be some reason. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing it, _Conan_-kun," The creepy mad scientist girl said, clearly enjoying my suffering.

I wanted to shout some choice words at her (particularly ones children should not be hearing) but I settled for mentally yelling at her: _You. Are. Not. Helpful. _

"Um... that's... it's 'cause of a bet. Ya see... a friend of mine bet me a buncha money I couldn't speak Osaka-ben fer an entire week. An' since I dunno much Osaka-ben I've jus' been pretendin' I couldn' talk," I explained, desperately hoping they would fall for such a stupid lie.

"What friend?" The smart-looking 'Mitsuhiko' asked. Clearly he isn't quite as smart as he appears to be.

"Hatt..." I started then I remembered that Kudo doesn't call me 'Hattori' when he's acting like a little kid so I corrected myself, "It was Heiji-niichan."

"Heiji-oniisan must be really stupid then," The little girl Ayumi-chan said, she was blushing, "Because Conan can do anything."

_Sure he can do anythin'... _I couldn't help but roll my eyes._ He can't speak Osaka-ben, he can't sing ta save his life (it'll happen some day, just ya wait, Kudo 'll be forced ta sing and he'll die 'cause he can't), an' de stuff he cooks is barely edible. Other dan dat he can do jus' about anythin'._

Mitsuhiko was the first to be suspicious, "Wait... Conan-kun isn't stupid enough to take a bet like that."

_Well excuse me fer being stupid! _I replied, "But I did, I did make da bet, why else would I be talkin' like dis?"

"Maybe he's some person that just looks like Conan-kun and is trying to take his place, that's what I've deduced," Mitsuhiko said in a very proud tone, "You may have fooled other people, but you can't fool the Shonen Tantei!"

...

It was already my third day being Hattori, I was actually getting used to it -still completely creeped out by the whole ordeal- but getting used to it.

I looked at the newspaper and saw the absolute last thing I'd been expecting to see until after we'd gotten this situation sorted out. Kaitou Kid had sent out a heist notice.

_What on Earth was Kuroba planning to do with my body? That dirty thief! I'm not letting him get away this time... Even if Hattori gets the credit for this, I will catch Kuroba!_

_Wait... maybe he's blackmailed Kudo-kun into doing the heist by saying he'd reveal 'Conan's' identity if he didn't... that would make things difficult. Kudo-kun is very intelligent -almost too intelligent- He could probably do Kaitou Kid's usual work while he's in Kuroba's body, he'd probably do a better job of it too..._

_No, no. Kuroba wouldn't have Kudo-kun do the heist, Kudo-kun has no experience as a thief (at least I hope he doesn't), Kuroba would make him stand in the crowd so he could get a further alibi that 'Kuroba Kaito' isn't Kaitou Kid. In other words Kuroba himself will be doing the heist... in my body..._

_Dear God! If he get's caught then _I'll_ be in jail for crimes _I_ didn't (really) commit! That's identity theft! Kind of..._

Regretfully I decided that it was better if Kaitou Kid didn't get caught... just this once.

I'd much rather not be stuck in jail for life after I return to my original body.

...

Hakuba was slightly taller than me and his features were not quite as thin so the Kaitou Kid costume didn't fit him quite as comfortably as it had fit me, but it would work well enough that no one would realize that tonight's Kaitou Kid wasn't quite the same as the usual one.

Really, I was just happy that Shinichi had agreed to hang out with Aoko as me during the heist. Although, naturally without any pursuers the heist went off without a hitch, such success was so dull there would be no merit in describing it to you wonderful readers, it's not as if what I took -excuse me, 'what _Hakuba_ took'- was Pandora anyway.

Really, so lets just ignore the details of the heist for now. The next day at school was really much more eventful.

It was sudden, for reasons that I didn't understand at first Aoko had made Shinichi (of course still stuck as me, he intended to announce that he would be traveling with mom in class today before he went off to be himself) a bento. I briefly wondered if he'd done something suspicious and was trying to confirm whether or not he was really me or if he'd gone a bit to far in his acting and flirted a bit to much at the last heist, but I put that thought aside and diligently acted as Hakuba.

A few moments after she'd given him the bento box and he was acting as me while he happily ate it's contents I looked over and out of the corner of my eyes I could see a surprised but determined expression on Aoko's face. Upon closer inspection of exactly what he was about to eat I understood why she seemed surprised.

I walked over to the desk they were sitting at with an unnaturally rushed pace.

"Kuroba," I said in a somewhat intimidating tone, making sure to use Hakuba's usual British accent, "...A word with you in private."

"Um... sure," He seemed confused but went along with me, clearly wondering what it was he'd done wrong.

Once we'd safely left the classroom I managed to calm down, slipping back into my usual poker face.

"Aoko's going to know you aren't me now..." I sighed.

He seemed surprised, "Eh? What did I do?"

"That bento... there was f-f-fish in it wasn't there?" I asked, hoping I'd just seen wrong.

"Fish? Yes. There was, but that hardly constitutes my identity being revealed..."

I couldn't stop myself from shouting a little bit, "Ugh! It had to be f-f-fish! What did you do last night to make her hate me? ! Fi-fish are..."

"You're ichthyophobic?" He asked, I could only nod defeated, he continued with a laugh that sounded all too natural coming out of my own mouth, "The great phantom thief Kaitou Kid, who can best the police and do mind-boggling stunts with ease, is afraid of _fish_?"

"Yes. I have my reason," I replied, only to be given a look that seemed to ask 'and pray tell, what are those reasons?' but when I said nothing he seemed to give up on the matter.

"That's too bad... I already ate some of the sushi that was in the bento..."

Just the thought that there were little chewed up bits of sushi- of fish -inside my body disgusted me to the point that I almost fainted, however I managed to stay conscious and we returned to the classroom.

Once in the classrom Shinichi continued to eat the contents of the bento (he would look at me with an exagerated smile whenever he was about to eat anything with fish in it) because it was too late now, his cover had already been blown, we'd have to explain everything to Aoko later.


	5. A collective facepalm moment

**hahaha I love taking a nice sledgehammer to the forth wall every now and then, don't you?  
**

**In this chapter; Shinichi returns... kinda, Heiji can't keep a secret, Hakuba does something he will never be proud of, and Kaito weaves a big lie  
**

**Disclaimer: If I owned it why on Earth would I be writing this on fanfiction? Wouldn't I put it in the actual story, or a side story at least?  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

You would _not_ believe the ridiculous lie we told Aoko to prevent both of our secrets from being revealed. As we realized that telling the truth that we had been body-swapped would only lead to her questioning when and we would have to say 'at the Kid heist three days ago' then she would point out that Kaito wasn't there and that would endanger his identity as Kid, of course she would also question who I was which if I answered 'Edogawa Conan' she would wonder about my maturity (especially after those skirt flips I'd had to do to keep in character) but if I answered 'Kudo Shinichi' that would lead to more questions.

So it was decided that an appropriate lie was in order, and man did Kaito know how to spin a lie... but I'm sure he'll explain that to you when it get's to be his turn, I have other things to tell.

It was the day after Kaito and I had lied to Aoko; I was able to happily return to Tokyo the next day disguised as myself. I know, it's sad, the simple fact that I was in such a situation that I had to use a disguise to appear as myself is ridiculous on it's own, but the fact that Kaito had clothing for disguising as me already prepared in his house seemed to be much more so.

I decided to surprise Ran by showing up at school. Having no forewarning she -and all of our classmates especially Sonoko- seemed pretty shocked when I walked in the room and sat down at my usual desk within the last moment before the bell rang. Despite looking like she really wanted to she wasn't able to actually say anything to me until lunchtime.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming back Shinichi?" Ran asked, her tone made her sound angry, but she seemed more worried.

"I hadn't been expecting to come back... As it is I'm not sure how long I can stay" I replied. It was the truth at least, I'd have never in a million years predicted that I would be body-swapped with someone that just happened to look almost exactly like my teenaged self, and I had absolutely no idea how long I'd be staying in this body.

She still looked a bit upset, probably because I was answering so vaguely, "But you could have at least sent me a text or something to let me know you would be at school today..."

She trailed off.

The look on her face made me worry she may have noticed one of the miniscule details that physically set me apart from Kaito.

"Did you do something new with your hair, Shinichi?"

_Crap, she had to ask about the hair... _sure, I had fixed it to look like mine but Kaito's hair was too unruly to control completely and the length was a bit different so it had been impossible to get it to look exactly like my hair always did.

I tried to sound casual as I replied, Kaito's body did the perfect jod of providing me with a calm poker face, "Of course not, you just haven't seen me in a while so maybe you're seeing things..."

"I guess so..."

...

Those kids were content to hang out with me and play with me despite seeming to believe that I was someone that just happened to look like Conan that was attempting to replace Conan for some sinister reason. Just how messed up are these kids after all the crime they've faced alongside Kudo? They really need to get some therapy.

Of course while they played with me they would every now and then ask some kind of accusitional question like 'where did you hide Conan?' or 'What do you plan to do once you've taken Conan's place?' - it was really annoying. Naturally, anytime they confronted me with such a question I would deny that I'd taken 'Conan' anywhere and claim that I really was Conan, unfortunately any time I talked it served to only solidify their suspicions.

After a while it was beginning to get so annoying that I decided to just tell them the truth -not all of it mind you- so they would stop asking and I wouldn't have to worry about anyone overhearing them.

"Listen up, if I tell ya somethin' secret... kin ya promise dat ya ain't gonna tell ne'one?" I asked, feeling defeated.

"We promise," All three kids chimed creepily at the same time, their expressions held the seriousness of a child in a candy store. The mad scientist Haibara only gaped at me, no doubt wondering how much I intended to tell them, either that or cursing that I wasn't as good at lying about my identity as Kudo.

"A'ight. Yer right, I'm not really ku-Conan... not technically neway," I said, trying to find the right words as I continued but it was difficult to explain it so that the kids would understand, "Ya see... at Kid's heist de otha day somethin' real weird happened an' fer some reason Ku-Conan, Hakuba (dat stuck up British detective), Kid, an' I wound up swappin' bodies."

There was a confused murmur of things like 'wow', 'that's really cool', and 'whoa Kaitou Kid used real magic!' I found it a bit strange that they were so willing to believe such a ridiculous story, but kids will be kids.

Mitsuhiko was the first to speak up, "Who are you then?"

I sighed, knowing that what I was about to say would sound weird in Conan's voice, "Ya've met me before, I'm Hattori Heiji de great high school detective of de west."

"Oh you're that weird detective that Conan's always beating..."

...

"Would ya jus' stop already?" 'Kazuha' asked, once again seeming uncomfortable with my language, "I don' care what ya bet Kudo-kun it's jus' plain weird hearin' ya talk in Tokyo-ben all de time!"

"I can't. If I quit now then Kudo is going to win," I replied in a complaining tone. From what I knew of Hattori it sounded like something he would say.

Kazuha looked at me with an angry expression, "Winnin' don' matter! It's not like 'e kin hear ya neway, 'e has no way of knowin' if yer speakin' Osaka-ben er Tokyo-ben!"

_Good point, I'd been hoping no one would pick up on that fact when I made up that lie... I guess it's time to try a different approach..._

"Ahou!" The angry words slipped out of my -no, Hattori's- mouth so naturally, "I'd know! An' it wouldn't feel right ta be cheatin' in a bet wit' Kudo! ..._Kuso_, look what ya made me do..."

_Eh? Did I just... in Osaka-ben? What the..._

'Kazuha' looked a bit surprised, clearly having not expected my outburst, "Don' worry I won' tell Kudo-kun about yer li'l slip up jus' now."

"Good, I'd hate to lose that bet..." I replied. Still thinking about how I'd spoken just before.

_Maybe being in this body is starting to have an effect on me..._

...

Okay, fine, be that way Shinichi. Leave me the duty of retelling the lies we told my childhood friend while you go on and on about how your childhood friend caught on to the wrong part of your lie. I'd sigh, but that's awfully hard to do in narration, so you'll have to make do with me tsking. Tsk, tsk, Shinichi, really lying is no good.

It was simple we just waited until she confronted us after school, during class while I was diligently taking notes as Hakuba I made up an appropriate lie.

She was very direct in her confrontation, "Who are you?"

"Ku-" Shinichi stared but I cut him off.

"He's the high school detective Kudo Shinichi, He's here right now because of a case," I answered. _Well, it's not even entirely a lie, actually... is that much even a lie at all?_

At this point Shinichi tried to fashion my hair into his usual cowlick to make it seem more believable that he'd just been in disguise.

"Eh? Why is he pretending to be Kaito then?" She asked, looking a bit confused.

"For the case he's working on it would complicate things if the culprits realized that someone of his -or my- caliber was on the case, so because his face just happens to look like Kuroba's he's pretending to be him in order to keep from being noticed by the criminals," I said, perfectly mimicking Hakuba's proud nature as I added, "Honestly I'd have taken on the case myself, it is occurring in our school after all, but the culprit would have been keeping an eye out for me so I had to decline."

"But then where is Kaito?" Aoko asked, she seemed to be concerned, probably wondering if 'Kaito' was involved in the case Shinichi was pursuing.

This time Shinichi spoke up to answer, "He's going to my school for me..."

_Idiot, that means that if you leave Kuroba Kaito has to show up..._


	6. Stupid coincidence

**I'm only good at getting people into the most unusual situations possible... man if Shinichi were real he would hate me for what I'm about to do to him... actually all four of them might would...  
**

**In this chapter; Shinichi gets accused of not being Shinichi, Heiji does something stupid, Hakuba answers the phone, and Kaito does something he never thought he would  
**

**Disclaimer: If I owned it Heiji and Kid would show up more often. They're my favorite characters cause they're awesome.  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Ran and I were in a park catching up -of course I only mentioned that I'd had several cases and used vague details- with each other after school.

I'm not sure how exactly but she'd managed to get suspicious that I may not actually be... well _myself_, though she hadn't mentioned it I could see it in the look in her eyes -it was the same look she had whenever she came to the conclusion that I could have been Conan, a look I had grown to find painful to look at.

We had been there for nearly an hour and she had been talking about how 'Conan' had been acting weird lately (Hattori you idiot, I'd have thought you of all people would have been able to act like a child) when she suddenly changed the subject.

"You aren't really Shinichi... are you?"

_How am I supposed to answer that? Technically I am... but technically I'm not. If I say 'no' I'll feel guilty for lying, but with my luck if I say 'yes' some sort of physical proof that I'm not will show up (like maybe one of my contacts will fall out of something). What to do... what to do..._

I resigned myself, answering the only way I really could, "It's complicated."

Yes 'complicated' that word seemed to fit the current situation very well.

I could easily predict what she was about to say, but I still wasn't really prepared for it, "Complicated... What do you mean by that? It's a yes or no question."

"But neither '_yes_' nor '_no_' is the correct answer..." My voice escaped as something that could only be called a whine and suited Kaito much better than it would me, I tried clearing my throat to fix the odd change in my tone, "I _am_ Kudo Shinichi... but right now I'm a bit... stuck in another role."

"Another... role?" She asked, not making this already difficult to explain situation any easier.

"Yeah... It's really complicated..." I hoped I could get away with just that explanation, "how about we go back to my house, I'll explain what I can there."

She seemed hesitant to agree, she was probably still uncertain about me but that was to be expected after I'd replied like that, "Alright."

When we got there I started to wish she hadn't trusted me enough to come along.

...

For a little kid Kudo (or I guess Conan would be the more appropriate name) has really good stamina, I mean I've seen him do some pretty amazing un-childish things that defy nearly all laws of physics; I've just gotta say one thing about him physically, his immune system sucks. I don't know if it's just because he has the physic of a child, if it's because of the poison, or if he's really been this weak his whole life but after spending five days as him I managed to catch one heck of a cold.

I was sitting around the bottom floor of the detective agency watching TV while that idiot sleeping Kogoro -who was supposed to be watching me- slept at his desk with a can of beer still in his hand. Of course neechan was already at school so if you don't count the idiot I was alone with my cold.

I really didn't enjoy having a cold in this body that was basically incapacitated by a simple cold, so I'm sure you can imagine what ran through my mind when I saw a half filled bottle of Paikaru in the alcohol cabinet -yeah, you can already see where this is going.

_Time fer dis not-child ta do some under-aged drinkin'!_ I though with a snicker, as I brought a cup of the alcohol to my (Conan's) mouth.

I knew full and well that if Kudo's immune system was distracted and he drank that alcohol that he could return to being Kudo instead of being Conan, and hey maybe if I didn't wind up changing into a teenager the alcohol might at least take away some of the pain of having this crappy cold. So it's a win-win.

Immediately there was a weird throbbing pain, bright pulsations of distorted color flashed in front of my eyes, I felt like I was on fire. I'd known it was painful, I've heard Kudo's screams when he transformed before... but this was... this was insufferable.

The pain made it harder to move, but I managed to get myself off of the couch as I realized that if I screamed I'd wake up the sleeping idiot. I wasn't sure where I was going to go at first but I knew I had to go somewhere, my thoughts were racing a mile a minute as I tried to think of where to go, even though the pain kept me from focusing on anything.

_Right... Kudo's house... it's empty right now... if I go over there no one'll hear... me scream. An'... I kin get... some of... Kudo's clothes... ta wear..._

I transformed not long after I'd gotten through the door and the pain began to subside, I rushed upstairs to look for Kudo's school uniform but it wasn't there so I put on some random clothes -cool looking random clothes mind you, not the stuff Kudo picks out for himself- from his closet.

I had just made it downstairs and was in the kitchen getting a drink of milk when I heard the front door opening.

_huh? Didn't Kudo say somethin' 'bout dat Subaru guy dat's livin' here bein' on vation? Who'd be comin' in at dis time a' day?_

Of course when I went to check and saw none other than Kudo (apparently he'd disguised Kuroba's body to be himself) and Neechan I was extremely surprised, and no doubt they were too.

I gulped, _d__is won' end well._

...

The more I thought about my seemingly random outburst of Osaka-ben the more I was disturbed by it.

Perhaps it was just Hattori's hot-blooded body acting on impulse in reaction to Kazuha's shouts, or perhaps I was finally starting to go insane because of this entire ordeal. Either way I wasn't really happy with it.

That odd occurrence had made me feel as though I wasn't entirely myself -not just physically, but mentally as well.

It was while I was thinking about it that the cell phone in my pocket started to ring.

I sighed, answering, "Hattori Heiji, 'ere."

"Hakuba it's fine, it's me," The person on the other end of the phone answered, I recognized the voice as my own.

"Kuroba?" I asked, already knowing I was correct.

"Yeah," He replied with a joking tone that didn't sound natural for my voice, "nice accent by the way. Are you getting used to being in Osaka?"

"'Course not, I jus' slipped up in my speaking is all..." I cursed myself for slipping into Osaka-ben again, "It's nothing... really. Is there a reason you called?"

"Yes, actually..." He seemed to be unsure of himself, that's not something that Kuroba would usually ever show.

_I guess this is affecting all of us a little bit... it's not just me..._

When he continued, my attention snapped back from my thoughts and focused completely on his request.

_Wait... What?_

_ Did he just ask me to...  
_

...

I sat alone in Hakuba's room trying to come up with a plan.

Shinichi left to go be... well Shinichi, leaving me with no 'me' as I was too busy playing the role of Hakuba.

Sure, I could easily say that Hakuba had returned to England for a little while, but unfortunately I wouldn't be able to disguise as myself while I'm in this body. Hakuba is to much taller than me for me to be able to pull it off without anyone getting suspicious, not to mention the voice; it had taken me a lot of training to be able to do what I can with my voice, I won't be able to do it with Hakuba's body...

That left only one option, it would have to do.

I grabbed Hakuba's cellphone and dialed a number that I never thought I'd need to dial asking for help. You already saw how that conversation went from Hakuba's part.

Eventually I was able to get him to

Now before you say anything I just want to say that I realize that it's completely stupid on my part to let Hakuba play me, but due to the circumstances it's more or less unavoidable. Besides he's seen how I normally act at school, it might be embarrassing for him but he should be able to mimic it on some level...

I'll handle getting him into a disguise that could survive a mop chase, as for the voice all he has to do is say he's got a cold or that he's practicing accents for a trick. That should work.

I sighed.


	7. fun with disguises

**UGH? How on Earth did this story turn so serious? It was originally meant to be a comedy, but somehow... you know that I don't even want to know how it became serious, it's still funny and that's what counts.  
**

**In this chapter: Shinichi lies to Ran again, Heiji helps him lie, Hakuba is a surprisingly good actor, and Kaito is disturbed  
**

**Disclaimer: If there's in change in weather or not I own it... I'll let you guys know  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Upon seeing another Kudo Shinichi in the house my mind went on autopilot, I grabbed his shirt and dragged him off to some remote corner of the house.

"Hattori?" I asked, though it wasn't really a question, he only had enough time to nod before I continued, "What on Earth are you doing here like _That_! ?"

I wasn't sure which I should be more concerned about, the fact that he was there as Kudo Shinichi rather than Conan, or that fact that _both_ he and I were there as Kudo Shinichi.

It was while I was harshly questioning him that I realized that he didn't seem to be in very good condition.

"Had a cold... drank some alcohol..." He responded.

_Do... do I always look this weak when I return to my original body? _I pushed the thought aside, hoping it wasn't true. _Nah, he probably just drank a bit too much Paikaru, my tolerance for alcohol is pretty low..._

"What are we going to do now? I can hardly explain how there can be two Kudo Shinichi's in a place at once!"

Hattori smirked, it look all too natural on my body, "One a' us'll jus' have ta be someone a'sides Kudo Shinichi... Kuroba Kaito maybe?"

I couldn't stop a small laugh from escaping my mouth, "This is so messed up..."

Me in Kuroba's body disguised as myself, Hattori in my body having transformed into my original self he's probably going to disguise as Kaito so I can get off the hook because Ran's already seen us both. Yeah... definitely messed up.

Quickly I messed up Hattori's hair to look like Kaito's, it would be fine to not give him any colored contacts because Ran's never met Kaito before so she wouldn't realize that the eye color was strange. Still, it felt stupid and half-hearted to be doing a disguise halfway.

With the disguise completed we went back to the room where Ran was waiting for us to explain how it was possible for there to be two Kudo Shinichi in one place at the same time.

...

Kudo disguised me as Kuroba, but somehow he didn't seem happy with it -maybe I was just seeing things.

I couldn't help but think how strange it was that he was disguising me as the person that he was supposed to be, but I decided that there wouldn't be any point in mentioning it.

As we walking into the room where Neechan was waiting for us I realized that it'd be best if I spoke up first and introduced myself, "Oh, ya mus' be Mouri-san, Shinichi's told me a lot 'bout ya. Ah... I'm Kuroba Kaito by de way."

She seemed a bit surprised, "Oh, nice to meet you...Kuroba-san."

"He's a magician," Kudo explained, making as little of it a lie as possible, "He's involved with one of the cases I'm working on, actually his life's been endangered because of the case... so because we look kind of similar I've been letting him pretend to be me."

"S'rry if I startled ya," I added with a sincere nod.

"Ah, it's fine... I just wasn't expecting to see someone that looked so similar to Shinichi..." Neechan said, she turned to Kudo, "What kind of case is he involved in?"

"Um... he's really sensitive about it," Kudo explained to her, "you see... his father -also a magician- was died years ago in a 'stage accident' but it was really a murder, he's taken over something his father used to handle and now his father's murders are after him."

I tried to act appropriately for having just been reminded that my 'father' had been murdered as I wondered whether he was summarizing Kuroba's real back story and adding a few lies or if he was just making it up on the spot; either way it was a pretty good dramatic back story, if it's real it explains a few things.

Unfortunately it was at that moment that one of Kudo's colored contacts fell out -I hadn't even noticed that he was wearing any but it would be impossible for him to continue pretending to be himself now.

The Neechan looked angry as she seemed to realize, at least to some degree, what was going on and misconstrued the rest.

I cleared my throat and tried my hardest to speak in Tokyo-ben, "As he said before, I've been letting him pretend ta be me. He just didn't mention that I've also been pretending ta be him to lure out the murderers."

"Shinichi!" She shouted, I could sense that I was about to be punched or kicked as she approached me and gripped the collar of my shirt as though I'd just said I was cheating on her. Then she suddenly let go and spoke quietly enough that Kudo (or maybe I should say Kuroba) couldn't hear it, "You'd better not let yourself get killed."

I'd seen how Kudo acts around her enough that I had a pretty good idea how I thought he'd respond to that, "'course I won't, you're still waitin' on me."

Fine, so Kudo probably wouldn't have said that out loud, but we all know he'd be thinking it.

...

It was ridiculous in itself that Kuroba had asked me to pretend to be him, but I find it even more so that he was pretending to be me so well that were I not aware that he was indeed not me that I would have began to question whether or not _I_ was me.

Seeing his acting made me feel bad for how horribly I'd been acting as Hattori up until now. But it's not as though I really knew that much about Hattori to begin with, Kuroba on the other hand is so flashy an noticeable that I'd have to be blind to be in the same class as him and not have caught on to his personality traits. So I should be able to at least do a passable job of acting as Kuroba, I'd feel bad if I didn't having seen his dedication in acting like me.

Kuroba had used his skills to make Hattori's face and hair appear to his own with frightening realism in preparation for school.

_Kuroba will never let me live this down, will he? _I mentally sighed before I began talking to Aoko, "So how did you like Kid's heist the other day Ahoko? I heard you went with Shinichi."

She blushed cutely, and tried to play it off, "Of course I didn't like the heist! Kid got away!"

"Of course he got away, your father really is no good at his job," I said with a disturbingly Kaito-ish smile, "And I bet Hakuba didn't even give Kid a challenge."

_Considering that the thief that night had been him..._

"Hakuba didn't go to the heist that night... I'm not sure why tough."

"Oh right I forgot, he was actually checking up on me that night, making sure that I was fine after switching with Shinichi," I said, making up an alibi for myself that would fit with the ludicrous lie that Kuroba and Kudo had told Aoko.

Somehow the day went by relatively peacefully despite the ridiculous situation.

...

It was almost creepy how good Hakuba was at pretending to be me, I made a mental note to myself that out of all the detectives I knew he was the greatest actor. Thinking about it now, he's British, he came from the land of Shakespeare so I guess acting skills should be expected.

I'd made this remark when I saw him flip Aoko's skirt -and while he didn't mention what color it was aloud- during the mop chase that ensued he let on that her panties for the day had been something he hadn't expected. I can only take that to mean that not all high school detectives can do as Shinichi can, perhaps it's a skill that Shinichi developed after being stuck at the perfect height to obtain such information without seeming suspicious.

Ever since the body swapping thing had started it had become a daily thing for me to come talk to Akako at lunch -you know typical 'get well soon' sort of thing only a bit more whiny.

"No, I'm not feeling any better yet Kuroba," Akako said as I approached.

"Come on, can't you just heal yourself with magic or something?" I asked, not for the first time, but maybe asking more than once would change the answer.

Akako sighed, "I told you before *cough* it doesn't work that way... a cold *cough* is one of the few things that cannot *cough* be fazed by magic... much like your heart."

She'd said the last bit very quietly as if she didn't really want me to hear it so I did the gentlemanly thing to do and ignored it, keeping up my poker face. It had creeped me out anyway.

She continued, "You'll just have to live *cough* with it until I get better. *cough* or would you rather I *cough* try to do something as I am *cough* now?"

Tempted as I was to just let her try and fix things now I remembered that she'd mentioned it possibly backfiring if she tried to use magic in her current condition. I sighed, "Get well soon."

As I walked back to my (well, it's actually Hakuba's) desk I defeatedly muttered some choice words that would have either made Nakamori-keibu proud or put him to shame.


	8. dissatisfaction

**It's about time I make something happen to our scrambled meitantei (+magician) after all I'm sure you're all getting tired of them just lying to each other's not-girlfriends, so I'm just wondering who's situation do you guys want to see get even weirder? I've got some ideas for each of them but if everything happens at once it'll just be confusing.  
**

**In this chapter: Shinichi goes back to Kaito duty, Heiji is annoyed by eternal youth, Hakuba begins to drive himself insane, and Kaito is impatient  
**

**Please review or else~ ~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Ran would probably be suspicious from now on because of the existence of 'Kuroba Kaito' that meant that because of stupid Hattori I no longer had the option of taking advantage of Kaito's body to pretend to be myself. Let me say, sometimes I really hate Hattori; just for doing this he deserves the pain that comes with my body transforming, and the headache that comes with the shonen tantei dan.

I sent a quick text message to the phone that Kaito had told me to use to get in contact with him: _I'll be back tomorrow._

So of course the next day I went to Ekoda high even though I'd have much rather kept going to Teitan.

Kaito seemed to have decided that I should meet this 'someone that might be able to help' that he'd talked about before, but I didn't expect it to be the redheaded girl that I'd seen him talking to at lunch on the other days that I was pretending to be him. I had actually assumed that she was Hakuba's crush or something like that because he always seemed to act strange when he was talking to her, but I suppose I of all people should know that appearances can be deceiving.

As it turns out the redheaded girl was a self-proclaimed witch by the name Koizumi Akako. I could feel the hair on the back of my -no Kuroba's- neck standing up straight being near her, so I suppose despite being a magician that utilizes tricks himself he actually believed her to be a witch and was at least a little bit afraid of her (not that he showed it at all).

I felt wary of her and couldn't help wondering if it was truly my own wariness or if Kaito's body was trying to react from previous experience, I decided it was best to be careful just in case.

He introduced me as Edogawa Conan, much to my displeasure but because I knew it would help with my secret I didn't argue, but pointed out that I was at an intellectual level above most collage students or adults.

"Oh, the so called 'rival of Kaitou Kid' that's always besting Kid?" she'd laughed (though halfway through it seemed to turn into a cough) making me think she knew more than she let on.

"That's right. It's nice to meet you onee-san ," I replied in attempt to fit whatever image she had of Conan. I decided it'd be best to just go with a polite childish image, hoping she wouldn't make an attempt to poke holes in the story as I was tired enough of lying as it was.

"Well, Edogawa-kun *cough* I'm sure it's been quite a hassle for you being stuck as... Kuroba," She said, her tone sounded cold despite her sympathetic seeming words. Somehow she reminded me of Haibara, the strange association only made me feel even more wary of her.

Kaito (Hakuba) broke the momentary silence whispering to me, "She says she can't fix us because she has a cold... I'm not really sure what to do about a cold because I'm almost never sick, but you get colds all the time right? Any chance you can fix it?"

I couldn't keep myself from looking at him with an annoyed expression, "Oi, is that the only reason you wanted me to meet her?"

"Maybe..."

...

It hurt even worse returning to chibi form than it did transforming into Kudo.

Everything was the same; same feeling of being on fire though the fire felt hotter, same weird distortions of color though the flashes were more disorienting than before, same strangely familiar sense of vertigo though it had been coupled with an intense nausea. The blinding pain that had been insufferable before however was not the same and the difference wasn't slight, it was the absolute worst thing I'd ever felt in my life.

I'm just glad that Neechan hadn't been around to hear my pained scream, she would have definitely would up worrying about Kudo more than she already is and it would have been my fault.

When I got back to the Mouri Detective Agency -for now 'home sweet home'- I was still weak from my cold and in pain (thankfully it had lessened but it was still there) from changing back into Conan so I plopped onto the bed and fell asleep.

I was woken up in the morning (it wasn't a school day so Neechan didn't wake me up) when the shonen tantei dan came to visit me because I hadn't been at school the day before. I told them that I had a cold and that it had disappeared over night (thank you alcohol!) which was a bad move on my part because them thinking I was well only made them want to play with me.

"Why don't we go hunt for treasure in the city!" Genta suggested. The remaining normal kids seemed excited by the notion.

_Ahou, I doubt dere's ne' treasure ta find in Tokyo, Osaka on de otha' hand... _I knew better than to voice what I was thinking so I asked, "An' what kinda treasure are ya 'spectin' ta find?"

The three of them all shouted at once hurting my ears with a multitude of unrealistic answers; 'gold', 'yaiba snacks', 'world peace', 'fried eel', 'a million yen', 'smoked cheese', and any number of other strange things.

I sighed, _Why couldn't I 'ave stayed a teenager a l'il bit longer?_

...

It seems that Kudo-kun decided to go back to pretending to be Kuroba so I had no other option than to return to acting as Hattori, which was significantly harder and much more annoying.

As Kuroba no one had questioned my accent or lack thereof, as Kuroba no one asked why I was acting strange, as Kuroba... at least I knew what I was doing when I was pretending to be Kuroba. By comparison being Hattori was maddening.

I cursed the current situation while I lay sprawled on the bed in Hattori's room -or perhaps at this point I should be calling it my room, we've been like this for a full week already. I hoped that whatever had happened to get us stuck like this could be resolved as soon as possible, but something in the back of my mind kept telling me that the four of us would be stuck in each other's bodies like this forever.

I laughed. I'm not sure if I was simply beginning to go insane or if I was just trying to make light of my own internal turmoil, but despite my own hopeless feelings I was laughing.

"Heh, Edogawa-kun -no Kudo-kun got pretty lucky..." I started to say out loud, "If we really are stuck like this for good then he can just tell the sleeping Kogoro's daughter that he was body swapped and continue on being himself instead of being Edogawa-kun..."

I'm not really sure who I was talking to, myself probably.

"'E wouldn't tell 'er, dat'd make it difficult ta avoid havin' ta tell 'er 'bout bein' Edogawa-kun," I added, not really paying much attention as I spoke, "Cause she'd wonder 'bout who else was involved, an' she'd wind up wonderin' where Edogawa-kun went."

"He might just go ahead and tell her everything anyway. He could easily break the news about the body-swapping and his having been previously shrunk at the same time."

"Nah that'd be stupid, why on Earth would 'e tell 'er two really big secrets dat'd only make 'er worry 'bout 'im at de same time?"

It was at that point that I realized that I'd been talking to myself and_ responding_ in Osaka-ben, which absolutely horrified me to no end so I promptly shut my -Hattori's- mouth and simply stared at the ceiling.

I'm sure you can imagine that I didn't get much sleep that night.

...

I had really been hoping that Shinichi would have known some kind of weird trick for curing colds, but thinking back on it if he knew such a trick he wouldn't have colds so often, so it was a pretty stupid idea to begin with. I guess the only things that ever go through his head are probably crime, murder, and Ran Mouri... now that's a rather disturbed notion, he needs therapy when this is all over.

Now with nothing better to do I was left pacing in Hakuba's room -well my room for the time being.

I'd gotten so used to playing his role that even when I was alone I found myself habitually checking the golden pocket watch that was always on my person. As you can see I'd ever begun using British-y phrases like 'a rather disturbed notion' or 'on my person' even in my narration!

You get the point.

I didn't like it. Not one bit.

It made me worry that I was becoming more and more like Hakuba, and worrying made me obsess over trying to fix the situation in much the same way Hakuba always obsessed over catching me -well Kid- and quite frankly that made me worry even more. The cycle of worrying and obsessing would probably go on without ending until it was either too late and my personality was completely turned into Hakuba's or the situation was finally resolved.

I'd give anything for it to be the later.

"It's only been a seven days since this began," I said, by habit using his accent as I checked the pocket watch, "Eight days tomorrow..."

_Ugh... why did I just say something so obvious out loud? Of course if it's a week today it'll have been eight days tomorrow. _I thought to myself in the most sarcastic tone I think I've ever thought in.

For a brief moment I was calm. I stood in near silence, the only sounds in the room being my own breathing, the beating of my own heart, and the hushed 'tick, tick, tick'ing sound of the pocket watch.

_'tick'_

_'tick'_

I took a moment to look at the watch before throwing it at Hakuba's bed.

"I DON'T WANT TO BE BRITISH!"


	9. complications

**Sorry it took so long for me to update (well longer than it has been taking me lately) it's just that I really have no plan for what happens next so I have to make it up as I go and there's not really much I can make happen without it getting really boreing... so this is a pretty short chapter and it's probably much less funny because I have no idea where it's going.  
**

** geez it feels like I've started to write myself into a corner, well maybe if I keep heading to the corner it'll blow up and I'll have a burst of inspiration. Wish me luck everyone!  
**

**In this chapter: Shinichi learns so new tricks, Heiji rambles about useless stuff, Hakuba , and Kaito worries  
**

**Please review or else~ ~ (this is not an idle threat, if you don't review I won't have any drive to write more) Thank you to everyone that has reviewed.  
**

**_.-._.-._**

There was no school and I wondered what I should be doing.

I couldn't very well go hang out with Ran after what had happened, at least not as 'Shinichi' she'd be too wary that I might be Kaito and eventually she'd find out, but I don't want to hang out with her as Kaito that would be almost as pointless as being there for her as Conan... I'd be there but not really there. So it stood to reason that I should just keep up pretending to be Kaito , the only trouble with that is I had no clue what he did in his free time besides magic and thievery -neither of which I wanted anything to do with.

I probably could have tried hanging out with Aoko because I could probably tell her I was Shinichi and just act like myself after what Kaito and I had told her before, but even if it's the truth that would feel like lying, so doing that was definitely out of the question.

With no idea of anything better to do I sat down in Kaito's room -my room for now- and tried practicing magic tricks so I could do a better job of pretending to be him. I was aiming to become able to actually impress Kaito with whatever skills I managed to acquire.

Yeah, I know, I set pretty lofty goals. If I didn't I'd never have been able to be such a good detective.

...

The shonen tantei dan's search for mysterious things didn't lasted nearly the entire day but was neither successful nor eventful. I was ready to head for Kudo's, no, Conan's bed when I got a text from Haibara the chibi mad scientist.

Apparently, she'd caught wind of my underage drinking adventure from the day before. She didn't seem to be very happy about it but she had decided to take advantage of the situation anyway to collect data to help her with future trial antidotes to that poison ahoutoxin or whatever it is.

All she did was take a blood sample to analyze (which came off as extremely creepy because of her child-like appearance) before proceeding to ask me questions concerning the time I'd been Kudo instead of Conan; 'how long did it last', 'do you feel any different since changing back'- that sort of thing.

With that over I finally went to bed, getting myself some rest after all the nothing I'd been doing all day. Not that I was really able to sleep well, I was to busy wondering if we were going to be stuck like this forever to get any quality rest.

Of course the next day at school was pretty stupid too. I've said it once and I'll say it again; being seven sucks.

...

"Heiji, ya've been acting weird ever since ya made dat bet with Kudo-kun," Kazuha said, her tone made it clear to me that if I didn't answer honestly I'd have first hand experience what akido feels like, "What's wrong? Ya know ya kin tell me."

I tried, to no avail, to keep a little snicker from escaping my mouth alongside my response, "You wouldn't believe me even if I did tell you."

"I'd believe ya, honest I would."

_Fool, you can't know whether or not you'd believe me until I tell you._ I thought for a moment about speaking my thoughts but decided not to and went with a more calm approach, "A little over a week ago _I_ wouldn't have believed _me_."

I'd say 'a little bit of honesty goes a long way' but she didn't really seem to appreciate my vague but honest response.

"Come on, jus' tell me Heiji! If it's affectin' ya so much I 'ave a right ta know what it is!"

I guess I was pretty close to the line that decides whether or not I'm sane- or maybe I'd already gone past it. Whatever the case I felt like if I kept lying I was going to fall so far from my sanity that I'd never be able to return.

"If you really want to know then stop calling me that."

Naturally, she was confused, "Eh? But I've been callin' ya Heiji since forever! Why on Earth should I stop callin' ya Heiji now? !"

"Because I'm not Hattori Heiji," I said, my tone sounding much angrier than it should have.

From the way she was looking at me I could tell that she wasn't sure if she should believe me or not, she was probably about to ask if it was a joke. I could answer that 'yeah, jus' kidin' why'd ya take it so seriously ya ahou', but I didn't want to do that, I wanted to stop lyin'- urg lying, so I left her without another word.

...

I'm not sure if I should be happy or disturbed that when we finally got back to school Shinichi achieved a level of pretending to be me so high that me managed to dye my (Hakuba's) hair aquamarine without my noticing for more than five minutes.

It's rather amazing that he managed to do that and I'm pretty excited that I've finally pulled him over to the dark side enough that he's pranking, but it just means we're all one step closer to basically being each other. Right, definitely _not_ a good thing, Shinichi being confident and skilled enough to prank me is _not_ a good thing at all!

At least he did it to me, I've never pranked anyone besides Hakuba with hair dye, besides I know the secret of removing it so it doesn't last the whole week it's- no I shouldn't tell you, a magician never gives away his own secrets after all.

Despite that things seemed to be moving in a good direction.

Akako's cold was finally starting to clear up, well it wasn't completely better but she could now talk without breaking into coughs and sneezes. Still I'm a bit disappointed that it hasn't completely cleared up, I mean who on Earth has a cold for more than an entire week? That's got to be a record or something...

I guess it's about time I do another heist, wouldn't want to keep my fans waiting.

Besides it'll be easy because none of the meitantei will be able to challenge me because of the current situation; Hakuba can't because it'd land him in jail, Hattori can't because even if he tried there's no way he'd stand a chance when he's probably still not used to being Conan, and Shinichi can't because not only is he not a detective right now he'd feel bad putting me in jail when I might be fighting against the same organization he is.

Hmmm... I guess that makes things pretty boring.

Ah, whatever I'm sure it'll all turn out well in the end.


	10. Girl troubles

**Okay, I apologize, I know that chapter nine was crappy. In any case I will be updating much less often than I was before, because I'm an amazingly busy person, but I intend to update every now and then now that I've got something of a vague plot going... actually it's starting to seem like a soap opera, I wonder how that happened- I don't even like soap operas- but all this weird 'actually, I'm not so-and-so's going around it's getting weirdly dramatic...  
**

**In this chapter: Hakuba continues his mental breakdown , Heiji faces an obstacle we've all been expecting, Shinichi is back to playing multiple roles, and Kaito is leading a boring British life  
**

**Please review or else~ ~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

_Why did I say that? Why the Bloody Hell did I tell Kazuha that I'm not Hattori! ? And why in the world did I run away afterward! Now she'll believe I was telling the truth, or at least part of the truth! What am I going to say to her? !  
_

Having left Kazuha on that unbelievable note I'd headed straight for Hattori's house and was now laying on his bed with the door locked as I debated with myself what the correct course of action would be from here on out.

I had already decided that I didn't want to lie anymore but there were some measures that had to be taken to protect Kudo-kun's identity as Edogawa-kun and possibly Kuroba's identity as Kaitou Kid so the full truth was not an option. Between not wanting to lie and being unable to tell the truth what option does that leave me?

I couldn't keep myself from sighing, "What did I ever do to deserve being dragged into this ridiculous mess..."

Suddenly there was a knock on the bedroom door, "Heiji! or ... not-Heiji! Er, whoever ya are open up! Ya've got some explainin' ta do!"

_Right, Kazuha is Hattori's childhood friend, it wouldn't be questioned if she came over here to talk to him. _For the time being I had no choice but to open the door before she decided to break it down and at least offer her part of the truth.

"Alright, ya better tell me jus' what's goin' on! Who're ya an' where's Heiji? Why've ya been pretendin' ta be Heiji fer so long?"

"This is going to sound really weird, okay? Please, just calm down, I'll tell you everything you want to know..." I replied trying not to sound as panicked as I was on the inside, when she nodded I continued, "I'm the high school detective Hakuba Saguru, and for whatever reason Hattori and I as well as a few other individuals have all been stuck inside each others bodies after a recent Kaitou Kid heist. To answer your question Hattori is Edogawa Conan right now..."

The moment that I'd mentioned Edogawa-kun she seemed shocked she took out her cellphone and started dialing as though the world was going to end if she didn't make this call.

I grabbed her hand just as she was about to press the send button and start the call, looking at her with a gaze of the utmost seriousness I said, "_Please_, don't tell anyone about this."

Hesitantly she nodded as she pressed the call button, after a few moments the person on the other end seemed to have picked up because she began talking, "Hello Ran-chan, if it's not ne' trouble I was wonderin' if I could talk ta Conan-kun fer jus' a bit."

...

"Conan-kun, it's been more than a week already," Neechan said, her tone almost accusing, "I'm sure your cold has healed enough that you can talk by now."

_Not good. If I talk I'll be found out!_

I tried just motioning with my hands, hoping I could get a message like 'my throat hurts' or something similar across.

"Conan-kun... no Shinichi, if there's something wrong just tell me, ok?" Neechan said, she seemed genuinely worried though I suppose I was the one at fault for that, "Just tell me so I can help you..."

"I'm... fine..." I replied, finding it extremely difficult to talk in a childish tone and sound somewhat hoarse at the same time while speaking in Tokyo-ben. I really hoped I hadn't said anything that would tip her off that I wasn't Kudo.

_Wait... did she jus' call me... 'Shinichi'? _Kuso_! She's suspectin' dat 'Conan' might be 'Kudo' again. What'd I do ta make 'er suspicious? Was it somethin' I did... somethin' I said? How am I supposed ta do ta make 'er stop thinkin' dat Conan's Kudo... right now I'm Conan an' I'm _not _Kudo!_ _Kuso, kuso, kuso..._

"Shinichi?" She said, clearly questioning that I'd replied to that name moments before, leaving me almost no way out of the situation; that is to say no way out but the truth, and maybe a little lie.

I sighed, giving up the annoying primary schooler facade and the phoney 'I have a cold and can't talk well' act, and not even bothering to try speaking Tokyo-ben, "No, ya've got da wrong guy, I ain't Kudo."

She was taken aback, "O- Osaka-ben? !"

"I kin explain."

...

Hattori called me, I really had a bad feeling about answering it but did anyway despite my misgivings, "Hello?"

"Kudo, I had ta tell Neechan 'bout da whole body swappin' thin' she would'a started thinkin' ya were Conan, sorry I know ya didn't want 'er ta worry 'bout ya," he responded, his wording made it obvious that she was in the room listening to him but from the sounds of it he'd managed to convince her for the time being that Conan and I were separate people. He was probably calling now so he could discretely clue me in on whatever lie he'd told.

I sighed, somewhat annoyed that he'd had to tell her what he had, "So, what happened Hattori?"

Before he had the chance to reply my phone -the phone I used as Conan to talk to Ran as Shinichi, I still kept it with me because there was no way that Hattori could play the part of me and Conan both especially with his accent- started ringing, the caller ID told me it was Ran.

_Crap! What did he tell her? _

"Ah, I've got to go Hattori, I've got another call coming."

"Wait! Kudo! Don-" Hattori managed to say in the time before I hung up, making me worry even more about what he might have told her but I was fairly confident that I could just play it by ear.

"Oh, Hello Ran," I answered the phone.

Her response was definitely not within the range of what I was expecting, "Drop the act Conan-kun, Hattori-kun told me everything."

_Oh, so that's how it is... he told her about the body swapping but to make it seem like Conan and I were separate people he told her that Conan had wound up in my body and then left everything else the same..._

It was going to be pretty tough to act appropriately, "A-re-re he did? But Heiji-niichan promised that he wouldn't tell anybody!"

...

The four of us got together for a meeting of sorts. Really it seemed as if the three detectives lives had descended into chaos leaving me the only one with any illusion of a normal life. I mean it, I stop watching them for one day while I worry that I might be becoming British and look what's happened:

Hakuba told Kazuha about the body swapping- though he was vague about the details, Hattori told the entire Shonen Tantei dan about who he really was and then he managed to get Ran Mouri to be suspicious about Shinichi again and covered it with a ridiculous lie, and luckily Shinichi is so busy playing two roles because of Hattori's lie that he hasn't had the chance to really mess anything up himself.

Honestly though, how is it that I'm the only one that's managed to keep my situation free of chaos, typically I'd be the one at the center of all the chaos... I am a magician after all. Maybe it's just their crappy detective luck that's making everything so much worse for them.

It's a miracle that all the lies we've told so far actually fit together, or maybe it's just a miracle that Aoko, Ran, and Kazuha haven't all met each other.

In any case everything was settled once we got it straightened out who knew what and what lies were being used to cover up which secrets. All we had to do was wait for Akako's cold to heal so we could get back to normal before everything starts getting out of hand...

...well before I'm stuck as a boring British person forever.


	11. I have a bad feeling about this

**The chapter this time is chock full of the usual drama and stupid jokes! You better prepare yourself, there's so many stupid jokes that I'd bet at least one of them will make you laugh!  
**

**In this chapter: a phone call of understanding or lack there of , Heiji faces Kazuha's wrath, Shinichi might as well have MPD, Kaito finally hears some good news, and Hakuba doesn't like where this is going  
**

**Please review or else~ ~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Almost immediately after she'd called Shi- no, Conan Ran received a call from Kazuha-chan asking to talk to Conan. Of course that made Ran wonder if Kazuha-chan knew that right now Conan was Hattori, but Ran was hesitant because she was unsure. Ran knew that if Kazuha-chan didn't know about the body swapping that if she gave the phone to Hattori (Conan) then because of his accent it would be obvious that something was going on, so she decided to try to figure out weather or not Kazuha-chan knew.

"What is it you want to talk to Conan-kun for?" She asked, trying to sound casual.

At this point Kazuha wanted to just shout into the phone something about wanting to talk to Heiji, but she remembered that Hakuba had told her not to tell anyone about what had happened. Kazuha had never seen such a serious look on Heiji's face, and it was because of that look that she'd decided to help them keep it a secret- even from Ran-chan.

Kazuha replied with a casual tone of her own, "Well, Heiji's always talkin' ta him so I figured 'e must be pretty fun ta talk to."

With this Ran mistakenly determined that Kazuha-chan probably didn't know that the person she was asking to talk to was actually Hattori so she tried to come up with an excuse for Conan to not be able to come to the phone.

"Conan-kun is over at his friend's house right now so I can't really hand to phone to him," Ran said, hoping it was a believable lie considering that Hattori (Conan) was standing right next to her.

Kazuha, in her determination to talk to Heiji, thought Ran's response was suspicious.

"Then kin ya tell me his cell phone number, I'll jus' call him directly."

Ran had no reason -at least not one she could voice- to object so hesitantly she gave Kazuha Conan's cell phone number, hoping that Hattori would somehow be able to trick Kazuha into thinking he was actually Conan.

...

"HEIJI! ! ! !" Kazuha shouted into the phone, honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you -whoever it is you are, you random stranger reading this- heard it from wherever it is you are in the world, "WHY ON EARTH DIDN'T YA TELL ME DAT YA WERE BODY SWAPPED WITH CONAN-KUN? ! ? !"

_Thanks Kazuha, yell into my ear why don't ya. Ya know, if I hadn't literally jus' told Neechan 'bout all a dis I would 'ave some serious explainin' ta do jus' 'cause a dat! _

I sighed, as I made the obvious observation that the stupid brit had made some kind of slip up and wound up telling Kazuha everything, "I didn't want ya ta worry 'bout me."

_Dear God! I sound like Kudo right now!_

"Ya still shoulda told me! I coulda helped!"

"Kin ya help now?" I replied, my voice coming out in that sarcastic tone Kudo always uses when he's annoyed.

"Er... no... but if ya kin think a ne' way I kin help jus' don' hesitate ta ask 'kay?"

_geez, what am I supposed ta say ta a cheezy line like dat? _I sighed, "Ahou. Ya know dat if I needed yer help I woulda asked fer it. I'm not da kinda idiot dat tries ta do everythin' on his own without gettin' people dat'd worry 'bout me involved."

"Didn't ya jus' say dat ya didn't tell me 'cause ya didn't want me ta worry 'bout ya?"

"Yeah, but if ya were able ta help I woulda definitely told ya," I replied, feeling a bit annoyed that she'd seen through that when I was trying to sound cool, "It's jus' dat dere's no point in ya knowin' about dis when dere's still nothin' we kin do 'bout it, an' it's not like we kin go ta a hospital er anythin' 'cause they wouldn't be able ta help."

"Jus'... jus' don't do anythin' stupid, ya ahou..."

With that she hung up, leaving me to wonder if this was how Kudo always felt.

...

"Okay Ran-neechan, I'll be extra careful careful," I said just before hanging up my phone. Ran was really worried about 'Conan', more so than she was worried about me... kind of annoying actually.

I sighed, having to pretend to be Conan with my own voice was just unbearable. The entire situation made me just want to tell her the truth so everything would be less complicated, but I knew I couldn't do that, if I told her now it would make all those times I almost told her but didn't absolutely meaningless.

As I was thinking that Kaito's cellphone started ringing, and I knew before I even picked up that it was Ran calling to check up on me, "Oh, Hello Ran, how are you?"

We managed to keep that conversation going for about twenty minutes before it dissolved into an awkward silence with neither of us really being sure what to say to the other, and at that point we just exchanged a 'talk to you later then' and hung up. That much at least added a little bit of normalcy to my day.

All of this was actually getting to be pretty tiring. At school pretending to be Kaito took up a lot of energy -the daily mop chase routine was downright exhausting- whenever Ran called on the phone I was supposed to be using as myself I had to pretend to be Conan and if she called on Kaito's phone I got to act like myself.

The situation had begun to get out of hand, it was much worse than having to be Conan, at least then I was still technically myself... at this point I'm not really sure who I'm supposed to be anymore.

Well at least Kaito seems happy about something, he was acting really cheerful after lunch - so much so that he started breaking character and didn't do a very good job of acting like Hakuba though I was probably the only one to notice.

...

Guess what, guess what, guess what?

... No that's not it.

That isn't either... you know I don't know who you are but you really suck at guessing things.

Right, I should just tell you what it is you were supposed to be guessing:

AKAKO'S COLD IS _GONE_!

Awesome right? She's completely healed. Hooray! We can go back to our original bodies and completely wipe this whole fiasco from our memories forever- _not_.

There's a catch. There's _always_ a catch, nothing can ever just go as smoothly as my heists -I've decided to just blame the detective's collective bad luck, this is all their fault, they just dragged me into it.

After just looking at me and Kudo for a little bit she said that she wasn't sure how to change us back and that she would look into it for us. I found it odd that she couldn't have been looking into it while she was useless with a cold for more than a week, but I didn't question it because I figured by 'look into it' she probably meant she'd ask Lucifer and that probably requires magic to do.

In the meantime while she looks into it she suggested that we get the four of us together and try all of the cliqued 'this will fix any weird magical situation and give you a happy story-book ending' things.

I stifled a laugh as I pulled out Hakuba's cellphone after school to call everyone together.

_ Heh heh, If it's cliqued she wants then it's definitely gotta be _that_._

...

For whatever reason Kuroba called us together, apparently it had something to do with the 'person that can help' that he mentioned back when this first began, but mostly he said that while that person tried to find a solution we should try some stereotypical problem-solving stuff and see if we can fix the situation before that person figures out what to do.

Surprisingly sound logic coming from Kuroba.

Kudo-kun was the first to question it, "So, what exactly is it that you're saying we should do?"

"It happens all the time in movies and manga right?" Kuroba replied as though he was referring to the most normal thing in the world, when we all looked at him with confused expressions he continued, "Do detectives not read fairy tales or something? Seriously, there's just one thing that always breaks curses or fixes weird situations!"

He paused dramatically as though what he had just said made it absolutely obvious what he was talking about -it didn't, but he seemed to think it did.

"Wait... you don't mean..." Hattori said, trailing off awkwardly. I stand corrected, apparently it was obvious from what Kuroba said what he was talking about; it'd have to have been obvious for Hattori to understand so quickly.

But it was Kuroba's response that surprised me most.

"That's exactly it. Kissing."

I was glad that I wasn't the only one that hadn't expected that when Kudo-kun and I both reacted at the same time, "What? ! Are you serious! ?"

Hattori shrugged, "It's worth a shot right?"

"So... if we're kissing love interests... is it the body or the mind?" Kudo-kun asked, "I'm not sure I'd be comfortable kissing Ran while I'm stuck as Kaito -you know, I'd much rather our first kiss be while I'm in my original body and not as Kaito or Conan or anyone else- but I'm pretty sure that it'd be just as awkward to be kissing Aoko..."

Kudo-kun trailed off as though he were beginning to question his own sanity for going along with what Hattori and Kuroba were saying. Quite frankly I agreed, it did seem rather strange for him to be going along with something of that sort, but I decided to blame Kuroba's body for influencing that, Kuroba/Kid was a flirt after all.

"hmmm... what about Hakuba?"

This comment caught my interest, "eh?"

"I mean, the rest of us have our childhood friends, but what about Hakuba?" Kuroba asked, "As far as I'm aware the only thing even remotely resemblance of a romantic relationship in Tantei-san's life is..."

The fact that he'd switched back to calling me 'Tantei-san' made what he was trying to get across painfully clear. Kudo and Hattori stared at him wide-eyed before turning to look at my reaction for a moment and going back to Kuroba.

"Kuroba... do you know what you're insinuating?"


	12. looks can be decieveing

**Sorry for taking so long I've had a bit of writer's block for this story lately, meanwhile Ideas for other stories have been flooding in like crazy (I have a three secret projects I'm working on) I might upload one of them pretty soon...  
**

**In this chapter: Hakuba is worried, Shinichi has rotten luck, Heiji is sick of being 'cute', Kaito questions his love life  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

I don't think it needs to be said that the kissing idea was disregarded almost immediately after the realization that the closest thing I have to romance in my life is my apparent obsession with Kaitou Kid and that our conversation dissolved into awkward meaningless chatter.

"Does anyone else find it odd that in America they sometimes call toilets 'the John' after it's creator John C. Crapper, but in England they sometimes call it 'the Lou'? I mean John is a guy's name and Lou is a girl's name so is the toilet supposed to be a boy or a girl?"

"Is it not more odd that you brought that up?"

See? Awkward. Meaningless. Chatter.

I blame Kuroba.

Around the time that we actually realized that the conversation was going no where (or at the very least wasn't heading anywhere that would actually make a difference in our odd situation) we mutually agreed that we should just go back to going about each other's normal daily lives as we waited for Kuroba's mysterious helpful person to figure out what to do. It occurs to me that we should have just done that to begin with, and that we actually made no progress at all.

Well at least we now had some hope of getting back to normal, before there had apparently been something stopping that person from helping us.

...

An awkward air of silence hung in the air as Kaito and I headed to our respective temporary homes.

I'm not sure if it was his luck, my luck, or maybe even Hakuba's luck that caused it but somehow we ran into a murder case between the park we'd met up at and Ekoda. Not that it was a difficult to solve case, in fact there was no trick so it was especially simple, the problem was that I wasn't a detective at the moment I was a magician but Kaito was a detective. Of course everything was easily settled when I stood behind him and delivered a deduction with Hakuba's voice (finding myself able to use the other detective's voice with creepish ease) as he acted as though he was the one talking, in much the same way I'd made deductions with Agasa-hakase while I was Conan.

That's not the bit of bad luck I was referring to, the issue was that almost as soon as we had handled the case we bumped into Aoko who cheerfully invited (I say invited loosely as we really didn't have much choice in the matter) us to go shopping with her.

Kaito and I looked at each other and sighed.

She at least knew I wasn't Kaito which meant I wouldn't have to put on any kind of act but she didn't know that 'Hakuba' was Kaito which meant that we would have to keep going along with our earlier lie or just admit that we'd been lying before. Neither of which would end that well for Kaito as it seemed the more he acted like Hakuba the more he wound up acting like him subconsciously, but telling Aoko that we had lied to her would probably end in one of her signature mop chases which he probably wouldn't be able to handle in Hakuba's body.

"Has there been any progress in that case you're working on?" Aoko asked me suddenly.

I replied, "There's been a little bit, I might be able to wrap the case up soon."

"Of course if I were the one working on the case I'd have already solved it by now," Kaito bragged, perfectly copying Hakuba's overly proud nature.

"Yeah right, you never would have gotten this far," I responded snidely, layering sarcasm on top of my words, "You wouldn't have been able to solve that murder we just ran into without my help."

Much to my -and probably Kaito's as well- Aoko defended Hakuba, "Hakuba is a good detective! He's going to catch Kid... someday."

Kaito and I looked at each other and laughed.

...

It was hilarious, I wouldn't have put it past Kuroba to have set up that entire thing just to make the utter lack of romance in Hakuba's life into a punchline... though I doubted that was the case. Even if we hadn't made any progress I at least go a laugh out of it and didn't have to act like a kid around them.

I didn't get to laugh long.

Guess who decided to come all the way from Osaka to visit me?

I'll give you a hint. It's not Hakuba. It's a girl that always seems to have her hair in a ponytail, the only other person that would have been in Osaka that would know that I had been turned into Conan.

Yes, I'm talking about Kazuha.

As soon as she came into the detective agency she looked at me and stopped suddenly before rushing forward to hug me (read: suffocate me with her chest) all the while loudly proclaiming, "Oh Heiji!~ Yer jus' so cute!"

Honestly, I never knew Kudo had it so rough before. I mean, yes, it felt totally awesome to have my (well Conan/Kudo's) face squished into her chest but I really couldn't breath and I was probably going to die of a nosebleed once she let go of me, either that or I'd get killed by her if she noticed the nosebleed. Kudo probably goes through stuff like this almost everyday with Neechan, it's a wonder he's still alive.

I managed to speak though my voice was muffled, "You're... choking... me... Kazuha..."

"Oh! I'm sorry Heiji!" She said as she let go of me, acting notably tsundere as though she realized exactly what she'd been doing but I highly doubted that she did because would have never let me live if she had, "Ya jus' looked so cute I couldn' help myself."

"Ahou! I'm not a stuffed animal ya know!" I responded, "'Course it'll hurt if ya squeeze me like that!"

Being 'cute' was beginning to become exhausting, I couldn't be sure how much longer I could keep it up without going crazy and stabbing someone for calling me 'cute'.

I'm not sure how Kudo manages to lie to the girl he loves everyday and is still able up with all this 'cute' crap? One thing's for sure, the guy has some serious guts (not literally, metaphorical guts). I knew wouldn't be able to take it.

...

I couldn't help but wonder a little bit if Aoko really thought that Hakuba might catch Kid -well me- someday, did she have a crush on him or something? I had to know.

"Aoko-kun, answer me honestly," I asked, I managed to keep up my act of being Hakuba despite the fact that I was having a mental breakdown thanks to my poker face, "What are your feelings for Kuroba-kun?"

Shinichi shot me an _'isn't that kind of cheating' _-look, which I answered with an '_oh and turning into a child and living with your crush isn't cheating' _-look. Point is between the two of us he's cheating way more.

"Why... why would you ask something like that?" Aoko asked, looking so shy that if I almost didn't believe that she was capable of chasing an international phantom thief around a classroom with a mop- but if anything I've learned from Tantei-kun (besides the underwear trick) it's that looks can be rather deceiving.

"It has to do with a case," I claimed, knowing that Shinichi has gotten away with using similar excuses on Ran before. Sure Hakuba wasn't that close to Aoko, but she's a policeman's daughter so she's not going to let a crime go unsolved if confessing her feelings will help solve it. Besides it wasn't even entirely a lie, if she answered this honestly she'd be helping me solve the case that is my love life.

Aoko seemed embarrassed, looking over at Shinichi and then immediately looking down at the ground, "I... I like Kaito..."

Even if I had been expecting that sort of response it was still shocking to hear the real thing. I'd never expected her to say it so out rightly...

"I'll just leave you two alone," Shinichi said, then he snickered -something that in my experience was usually followed by a soccer ball being kicked with demonic force- adding in a whisper that would have been loud enough for Aoko to hear, "Kaito."

And here I though that Shinichi of all people in the group would appreciate the importance of having a secret identity! Why on Earth would he go out of his way to ruin mine! It's not like I go around telling everyone he's Edogawa Conan and Kudo Shinichi... well at least he didn't tell her I'm Kaitou Kid...

Aoko's expression couldn't be described as simply embarrassed or angry, a new emotion would have to be made up to fully describe the look on her face when she realized who I was.

"Kaito?"


	13. Bad Luck

**thirteen is an unlucky number, so chapter is bad luck for the boys, a lot of romantic actions leading to the worst bit of luck yet! Sorry if it's not quite what you're expecting... I'm going to charge straight forward to the ending from here, so be ready!  
**

**In this chapter: Aoko doesn't know what to do about Kaito, Ran feels lonely, Kazuha still thinks Heiji is cute, bad news is received (I didn't think I could write it from Akako's POV but this is a girl's only chapter so it's third person)  
**

**Yup, this chapter is completely the girls, get ready for tsundere.  
**

**Please review or else~  
**

**_.-._.-._**

Kaito was Hakuba all this time? No that's not possible there has to be a mistake! But then if it was a mistake would he have that distressed look on his face... I may not be a detective but I doubt it.

Still, I had to ask just to be fair, "Kaito?"

Panic flashed across his face, he was probably trying to come up with a lie to tell me just to get me to think he's really Hakuba. Well, it's not going to work! I've seen through your lies Bakaito!

I start to pout as I look at him more closely, it's a pretty good disguise, I can't even see where the mask stops. I try pinching his face to see if it'll come off... it doesn't.

"Ow, ow, OW! Stop that Ahouko! It hurts!" He says as I pinch him, I let go. He seems to realize that he just made it obvious that he really was Kaito and put his hands over his mouth as he murmured curse words in another language -English I think- before sighing and putting his hands back down in defeat, "...Sorry Aoko..."

Does he think sorry will help! That idiot! Saying he's sorry only makes it harder for me to be angry at him! I have a right to remain angry!

"Kaito! What is going on here! Why do you look just like Hakuba even though you aren't wearing a mask?" I shout, reaching for a conveniently placed mop that I could almost swear wasn't there until I reached for it.

"Would you believe that Hakuba, Shinichi, Hattori, and I were kidnapped by aliens from Saturn and that they gave us all plastic surgery against our will?" He responded, venturing a shy smile as he raised his hands to protect himself from the mop.

What a load of crap. It's not even as good as the usual lies he comes up with to go with magic tricks.

"No."

I gripped the mop tightly and prepared myself to swing but he lowered his arms as if resigning himself to his fate as started to speak again.

"Of course you wouldn't..." He sighed, "The truth is we were mysteriously body-swapped now I'm stuck in Hakuba's body, Hakuba is stuck in Hattori's, Hattori is stuck in Shinichi's, and Shinichi is stuck in mine..."

I wanted to shout at him, to yell that he was lying, but something about the look on his (er... Hakuba's?) face made me believe what he was saying.

"Oh... Kaito... no..."

"We've been trying to fix it... but it's been almost two weeks already. I'm not sure if we'll ever get back to normal again..."

I hit him with the mop lightly.

"Bakaito."

He looks at the mop then looks at me with that silly grin of his (that looked extremely out of place on Hakuba's face) but says nothing. He just stands there smiling as if he expects me to do all the talking. Fine.

"Of course you'll never be normal! But even if there's no way for you to go back to being you I'm sure you'll find one. That's just the kind of luck you have!"

"I guess so."

...

It'd been a while since I'd last talked to Shinichi, ok a while might be an exaggeration but it felt so wrong that he was so nearby but he couldn't hang out with me because he was so busy pretending to be somebody he's not... I was starting to miss him. I didn't even have Conan around anymore, Hattori was nothing like the cute little brother that I'd gotten used to.

I made up my mind and decided to call Shinichi, just to check on him. Who knows, maybe he'd have some free time and we could hang out.

"Hello, Ran," He answered.

"Hey Shinichi, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to hang out or something..." I trailed off as I asked, feeling embarrassed. I worried that he'd just make up an excuse because he might not want to hang out with me.

I could almost see him shrugging like he always does through the phone, "Sorry, I've got to go to some magic show Kaito wanted to go to... he was going to go with me -you know as Hakuba- but I don't think he's going to be able to make it... want to come?"

Eh? Is he asking me out on a date? ! Wait no... he'd be there as 'Kuroba Kaito' there's no way he'd be thinking of it as a date. I'd rather be together with Shinichi AS Shinichi... there's no meaning in it if he's someone else...

I sighed before responding, "No... just promise we'll hang out sometime when you get back to your real body... okay?"

Shinichi didn't answer right away. That worried me. I was about to say something but he suddenly spoke up in a tone that made me want to believe him, "Ok."

Even if he had been hesitating before there wasn't an ounce of hesitation in his voice now.

"I'll definitely come back to you someday, Ran."

He hung up on me after that, leaving me with an awed feeling and blush creeping across my face.

To get my mind off of how cool Shinichi just sounded I decided to call Conan, again, to check up on him. I mean he gets into enough trouble as it is normally, imagine what kind of trouble he might be getting into as Shinichi!

"Hello Conan-kun," I said once Conan picked up.

"Oh, Hello Ran-neechan," he replied, if it weren't for the '-neechan' part I'd have thought he was definitely Shinichi just playing a trick on me.

"How are you doing? You're not lonely are you?" I asked. I mean I have no idea where Shinichi even was before all of this happened, what are the chances that there's anyone that Conan-kun knows around?

"I'm fine, What about you Ran-neechan?" He asked, sounding calm.

Even though I called to check on him, it sounded like he was more worried about me. I guess I can't think of him as a little brother when he's older than me right now...

"I'm fine..." I answered him.

We continued talking for a little bit before he had to go do some 'Shinichi-niichan business' so we both hung up and I went home to fix dinner for otou-san, Hattori, and Kazuha-chan (who was sticking around because of Hattori).

...

Heiji kept complaining that it hurt whenever I would hug him, but it's not like I could help it! I might wouldn't hug him so much if he wasn't just about the cutest thing ever!

Is this how Ran always feels around Conan? ...I'll have to ask her that later.

I mean even though he's like four feet tall he's talking all detectivey and teenagery! It's just too cute! He's actually even cuter whenever he insists that he isn't cute because he pouts like he's a grown up even though he isn't.

He was even cuter at dinner because he was trying to act like Conan because Ran's dad still doesn't know about the whole weird body swapping thing, so even though Heiji's in complete denial about being a child he was doing a totally good job of acting like one and...

-Oh God. I've become a doting older sister.

Whatever. I have every right to enjoy Heiji's cuteness until he get's back to normal!

...

Kaito sat alone at his -no Hakuba's (though at this point it may as well be his)- house, thinking. Not about anything in particular, just thinking.

He'd already reached the point where he was starting to honestly believe that they may never be able to return to 'normal'. He was already worried that even if he did get his original body back things would never be the same; some of his toughest pursuers would know his true identity, he'd never quite feel like himself, and no matter what things would be awkward between him and Aoko from now on.

Not that it'd be any be any better to give up on righting the situation.

Kaito spent hours agonizing over this, trying to think about every possibility... Like a detective.

He sighed, "I wonder how much longer things will stay like this..."

Suddenly his phone started ringing, he cursed himself as he checked the time on that stupid pocket watch before he picked up the phone.

"Hello...?" He answered, wondering who in the world would be calling him past midnight.

"Kuroba, it's me," said the person on the other line. The person's tone sounded so disappointed he almost didn't recognize their voice.

"Akako?"

Her change in tone was obvious, he could practically feel her glare through the phone, "Clearly, or can you not recognize my lovely voice?"

"I was just making sure.," he replied, borrowing from Hakuba's usual overly professional demeanor but adding his own charming twist as he continued, "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?"

"Not pleasure."

"Ah-re?"

"I asked Lucifer what would need to be done to return you and those other boys to normal..."

Kaito completely ignored her tone, focusing only on her words. He asked, "What do we have to do?"

She hesitated, not sounding at all like a self-absorbed witch when she finally spoke.

"It's impossible."

Kaito stopped moving. The phone dropped out of his... no Hakuba's ... no HIS hand and fell to the floor with a clattering sound. Once he got over the initial shock -though still very much in shock- he bent over and picked the phone back up, pressing it back to his ear as if hoping he'd heard wrong or that Akako had been joking.

"Kuroba, it's up to you to tell those other boys, the four of you won't be able to return to your original bodies... unless something coincidental happens like whatever it was that switched you in the first place."


	14. Happy End?

**Well here goes nothing! The final chapter! Everything gets resolved! Happy ending time... kinda. I hope you enjoy it, this chapter was really hard to write because it only worked well in third person... so for this chapter the '...'s are just going to be for breaking up scenes instead of POVs...  
**

**Thanks for everyone who's read this far, especially those who've reviewed. And special thanks to Syrus07 because you really helped a lot thought I'm still not sure how it turned into what it did.  
**

** please review!**

**-._.-._.-**

It's been one year since then, and the four have become close friends -though they may argue otherwise- as they went about living what used to be each others lives.

"Ya really gave me a lot a' trouble last heist, Shinichi," Hakuba remarked glaring at Shinichi. He spoke with his now signature mix between a British accent and Osaka-ben

Shinichi smirked back at him, which was never a good sign, as he replied, "It's not my fault that you were stupid enough to fall into that trap, right Kaito?"

Kaito and Shinichi had begun taking turns being Kaitou Kid ever since they heard that they weren't likely to ever change back to their original selves, if only to make alibis for each other and aggravate the black organization.

Kaito gave a confident smile and calmly replied, "I'd really thought he'd be able to avoid such a simple trap... maybe he's just stupid. The chibi tantei managed to avoid it."

"Would ya stop callin' me that Kaito? !" Heiji replied, outraged that everyone picked on him for being so small when he was the same age as everyone else. He managed to calm himself down a bit before adding, "'sides, I might not be a chibi fer long."

"Oh, that's right, ever since Hakuba became Haibara's assistant she's making amazing progress on the antidote," Shinichi said, thinking back on the conversation he'd had with her over the phone the night before, "She even mentioned that she may have perfected the permanent antidote the other day..."

"Yeah, I'm gonna be testing it tonight. As far as Neechan knows I'm going over there because the Shonen Tantei Dan is having a sleepover at Agasa's house the whole weekend... I had ta promise her that I wouldn't do 'nethin' ta Ayumi-chan and Haibara during the night since I'm a teenager on the inside and they're just kids," Heiji sighed.

"Yer the only person I know that would be able to make Conan look like a pervert," Hakuba said with a snicker, "Ran probably only thinks that way because she's seen the face ya make whenever Kazuha gets done rubbing your face into her chest."

"Eh? She does that? I'm jealous," Kaito remarked, "maybe if I'd become Conan instead then Aoko would do that... well she is a bit lacking in that area so it probably wouldn't be as soft... plus then I would be able to disguise myself as a child! I'd be the perfect phantom thief."

"You're more than good enough as it is," Hakuba reminded him, sighing at his own failure.

"I'm glad you agree Tabtei-san."

"Hattori... I'm going to have to go with you right? If the antidote works I'll..." Shinichi asked, deciding it was better to steer the conversation away from his and Kaito's night job before a passerby happens to overhear anything.

Heiji nodded in confirmation, "Yeah, it's probably better if you're the one to tell her..."

Shinichi sighed, "It's going to feel so weird telling her now... after I've gone so long trying so hard to make sure that she wouldn't find out..."

"Dun worry, I'm sure she won't be mad at ya er 'nethin'," Heiji reassured Shinichi giving him a smile that Kazuha had dubbed 'the cutest smile in the world' months prior, but in this situation it looked uncertain despite his confident words.

...

As expected the antidote that Haibara made worked. Heiji -now 'Shinichi' rather than 'Conan'- had stayed over at the professors house for full day to make sure that it wouldn't wear off after just twenty-four hours, but only time would tell if it was truly permanent and whether or not it had any unexpected side effects.

Shinichi had stayed with him, knowing that even though Ran knew about the body swapping it would still be strange if Heiji disappeared as 'Conan' and reappeared as 'Shinichi' when Conan was supposedly in Shinichi's body, because even after finding out that he wouldn't be able to ever return to his own body Shinichi had still been determined not to tell Ran that he'd been Conan all along- at least originally.

Naturally, Shinichi intended to be the one to tell her the truth; it was his mess, cleaning it up is his responsibility.

And so here he was, standing in front of Ran alongside the Heiji that had grown from being 'Conan' to Being 'Shinichi' a day prior. It would be an understatement to say that he was nervous.

"Shinichi... and Conan-kun...?" Ran said hesitantly as she stared at the two similar looking boys, she could sense that there was something wrong.

Heiji sighed, "Um... sorta."

Shinichi gave an awkward smile as if to say 'everything's fine, this is how it's supposed to be' but the smile only lasted a brief moment before he began, "Ran... there's something I have to tell you..."

He paused, he'd already thought about everything he wanted to say before hand but now those words were failing him, in his mind the words started to sound superficial. Ran seemed to understand that whatever he was trying to say was going to be difficult for him, so she waited for him to speak on his own without trying to pressure him.

"I really should have told you a long time ago..."

...

"Eh? So Conan-kun was Kudo-kun de whole time?" Kazuha exclaimed.

"That's right," Heiji confirmed, he'd told her himself because she was going to have to be involved in this.

There was no way he could keep her from noticing that he'd had such a huge growth spurt in such a short period of time so the only option had been to tell her the truth about Shinichi, though he may have neglected to mention that they were _still_ fighting against an evil organization.

She laughed, "That explains so much actually."

"Huh? Wha'dya mean by that?" He asked, even though he already had a pretty good idea of what she meant.

She didn't bother to answer that, "So... yer gonna be 'Kudo-kun' from now on? Ya ain't gonna go back ta bein' 'Conan-kun', right?"

"Yeah..."

"It's a shame really, ya were super cute when ya were Conan-kun," Kazuha said with a smile.

Heiji grinned back at her, "Well, sorry for not bein' cute!"

"That's not what I meant, ya know!"

"Then what did ya mean ya ahou?"

The two argued just like they always had for some time before they finally kissed each other like some kind of crazy, twisted, but still extremely cheesy story book ending.

...

"It's been a year... hasn't it?" Aoko asked.

"Yeah..." Kaito replied, "Still kind of hard to believe that all of this actually happened."

"I know, there are days that I wake up thinking that it was all some kind of super long crazy dream," She smiles at him.

He returns the smile, "But if all of that unbelievable stuff was a dream that means that I'm really just a boring Half-British detective guy that suddenly decided to become a magician and started dating the prettiest girl in school."

Aoko blushes, looking to flustered to do much but she still managed to reply, "D-don't say stuff like that! BaKaito!"

"Even if it's true?" Kaito said as his smile turned into his usual smirk.

Upon seeing the smirk -and knowing full well what usually comes after it- Aoko quickly devoted both of her hands to making sure that her skirt stayed down as the blush on her face grew even redder than before, "It's not true, there are a bunch of prettier girls in our school... like Akako-san or- mmpphg! !"

As Aoko denied what Kaito though to be reality Kaito rushed up and did what he does best, steal -this time his target was a kiss. When he finally pulled away he flashed a broad smile at the dazed girl.

"Sorry for not sending a heist notice for that kiss," He laughed.

...

Haibara sat in her lab alone, playing with chemicals that normally no one would ever give to someone that had the appearance of an eight year old, not that she had anything better to do now that she'd completed the antidote.

"Yer going ta take the antidote too, aren't ya?" Hakuba asked.

Haibara looked up at him with an indifferent expression, "I wasn't planning on it, If I changed back it'd only be easier for people from that organization to recognize me and it's not as though I have a life to return to."

He looked away, his expression seemed careless as he replied, "That's too bad... I was hoping that you and I could maybe go out... or something."

"You..." The chibi mad scientist couldn't think of anything to say so she just trailed off awkwardly.

Hakuba smiled as though he'd just solved a particularly difficult puzzle, "If anyone asks you're my girlfriend from England."

"I'm only half British you know," Haibara retorted giving him a 'that doesn't fix the problem' glare.

He did know, in fact he'd goggled her to find out as much about her as possible the night that her learned of her true identity but that was hardly relevant at the moment.

"So am I... well I used ta be at least."

Haibara sighed, she was tempted to say something about all detectives being persistent but clearly thought better of it, "Fine."

Hakuba watched as the scientist grabbed something and began to walk away. He understood what was going on but felt the need to ask anyway, "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to take the antidote, so you better go get me some nice clothes so I'll have something to wear after I change back," She replied coldly but there was a hint of affection in her tone.

"Alright," He replied, "So what are your sizes?"

Haibara let out an amused laugh, "As if you don't already know."

...

And they all lived happily ever after...

...probably.


	15. And the story continued

**There were a few requests for a sequel, so I decided to give it a shot... Just understand even though I ended it in a way that left room for continuation I never really intended to do anything besides leave the rest up to the reader's imagination... So all of this is coming off the top of my head in attempts to make you happy.  
**

**In this chapter; things change  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review.**

* * *

It was a normal day, that's how these things always begin. No one would have ever expected such a thing to happen on a pleasant day like that, not that a dark an stormy night would have made the occurrence any more predictable. Even if there had been any kind of omen we would have likely dismissed it without a thought, though I can assure you we had no warning whatsoever.

Everything we'd become accustomed to simply changed in the time it took to blink.

After the body swapping fiasco had occurred our lives passed by as normally as they possibly could in that situation for a little more than a year, the event that I'm talking about now happened only two months later.

... and the story continued before any of us had realized that there was something horribly wrong.

* * *

I had been eating dinner with Ran -it's not like it was a date or anything, we were just hanging out- we had been talking when my phone started ringing. I looked down at the phone, seeing 'Shinichi Kudo' on the caller ID.

Why would Hattori be calling me right now? Is it important? I wondered as I answered, giving Ran an apologetic glance, which she returned as if to say that it couldn't be helped.

"Hello? What is it Hattori?" I said into the phone, implying with my tone that if this wasn't something important I intended to hang up.

"Should I take that to mean you're still Shinichi?" The voice that answered was definitely 'Shinichi', so it should have been Hattori that I was speaking to since he was supposed to be in my body but the lack of accent made it clear that this wasn't him talking, not to mention the fact that Hattori has always called me 'Kudo' rather than 'Shinichi'.

I immediately felt suspicious, my eyes narrowed as I replied, "Of course I am, what do you mean by that anyway?"

"Really? Nothing has happened to you?" Whoever I was talking to seemed surprised, but didn't seem to think that explaining themselves would be necessary.

"Was something supposed to happen?" I replied, hoping he would finally give me a legitimate answer instead of just answering me with another question... again.

"Well there's... been a new development."

Though it was -thankfully- not a question, the answer still left a lot to be desired as it didn't actually answer anything. I still wasn't exactly sure who it was I was talking to much less what kind of 'development' could have occur that I needed to be informed of or why this person seemed to believe something may have happened to me. I figured it would be best to keep this simple before I wind up with even more questions running through my head and not getting answers to the current ones.

"What's happened?"

He seemed hesitant to say anything, "Er... I've been body swapped again and now I'm in your body."

Another body-swapping? Why was I left out of it? Wait before that... Hakuba and Hattori both have accents so this must be Kaito. Is it wrong that I'm worried that Kaito is in my body? Right... that's hardly the problem here.

"What about Hattori and Hakuba?"

"You're the first I called," Kaito replied, sounding oddly calm though I knew he was probably freaking out even if only a little, "But Hattori would have to be in either Hakuba's body or his own right now, considering those are the only remaining options once my body and your body are taken out of the equation."

True, Hattori having returned to his original body (and Hakuba also would have returned to his own if that were the case) was a distinct possibility. The mere fact that more body-swapping was occurring after so long (giving the possibility of returning to normal) left me somewhat overjoyed despite the fact that I was apparently being left out of it- but the mere thought that Hattori may already be in his own body as I spoke to Kuroba only served to annoy me. Why couldn't I return to my body? Must I be stuck as a look-alike magician forever?

"The four of us should probably meet up at the usual spot," I said, hiding both aforementioned emotions expertly with Kaito's own flawless poker face, "I'll call Hattori's phone, you call Hakuba's, alright?"

Kaito laughed quietly for a moment before replying, "Who died and made you the boss? Well, whatever, I had already planned to do that anyway."

Before getting the chance to make a comment about just how annoying it was to know that he and I had come up with the same plan he hung up, leaving me with no choice but to send Ran another apologetic glance as I began to dial Hattori's cellphone.

...

I'd been in the middle of a mid-day nap (not really something I'm in the habit of doing, I simply did it because I had nothing better to do) when my cellphone went off, the obnoxious ringtone startling me from my nap. I found my self unconsciously glaring at the phone just a moment before picking it up.

The caller ID read 'Kuroba Kaito', I wondered for a moment exactly what Kudo would want from me. Deciding that the best way to find out what he wanted would be to simply answer the phone I finally answered the phone, "'ello?"

"Are you Hakuba or Hattori?"

I wasn't usually confronted with such odd questions so soon after waking up, he hadn't even bothered to greet me in return. I could feel a faint frown creeping onto my face, thinking just a moment about how to answer.

"I sa'pose one could say I'm both..." I replied, trailing off before I continued with an explanation, "It dapends on whether er not de identity of a person is decided by their soul er by their physical body, de answer 'aught'a be de 'soul' but dat can't be seen by the naked eye, so instead we rely on de a'pearence ta tell us who's who. By dat standard it's impossible ta say if I'm truly 'Hakuba' er if I-"

"Definitely Hakuba then," He interrupted.

No explanation... I swear he's becoming even more like Kuroba everyday- it's almost frightening. I might as well ask. I sighed, "Yes, why do you ask?"

I could hear a loud sigh emerge from the other end of the phone putting my own sigh to shame, finally he responded, "Looks like Kaito and Hattori have somehow managed to body swap with each oth-"

That was as far as he could get before I couldn't stop myself from making a comment, as stupid as it may have been, "They what? !"

"Kaito is now in my body, and it would appear that Hattori is now in yours," He responded with yet another sigh, "Kaito called me a moment ago and he should be calling Hattori now, it was decided that the four of us should meet up at the usual spot to discuss what's going on."

"Fair 'nough, I'll be there soon," I replied.

"See you then," Kudo said just before hanging up.

I muttered quietly to myself as I put the cellphone in my pocket and began to slip on some shoes, "It's not like I had 'nethin' better ta do 'neway."

...

I had been Hakuba for approximately twenty four minutes, forty-nine seconds, and twelve milliseconds- I knew this because since becoming him I had the oddest desire to keep up with time right down to the millisecond and could not help but check the pocket watch every other moment to be sure that time was indeed passing at the same rate it usually does. It was so annoying and I hated doing it but I really couldn't help it.

Naturally I was at a loss as to exactly why -or how- I'd suddenly become Hakuba after being Kudo for as long as I had but it was far from being the strangest experience that I'd ever had so I tried looking around to see if I could determine why I'd suddenly switched bodies again- I couldn't.

My search was interrupted when my pants pocket started vibrating along and playing a strange tune that seemed to be more to Kuroba's tastes than Hakuba's. Upon pulling out the cellphone I saw the name 'Kudo Shinichi' on the caller ID, which would have been more helpful if I hadn't been Kudo up until that point.

I answered the phone, hesitant as I wondered who was on the other end, "Er... Hello?"

"Why hello Tantei-'san'~" Rang the obnoxious tone that could not have been mistaken for anyone else even if the wording hadn't already made it clear. The fact that I was in Hakuba's body at the moment served to only make him seem even more obnoxious, if that was even possible.

"So it's you..." I muttered, adding the next bit under my breath, "Figures de Kudo look-alike would be de one ta take my place in Kudo's body."

The magician-thief laughed, I could practically see a smirk on his face as he spoke, "You're Hattori then? That makes things easier."

You have no idea how disconcerting it is to hear that you've just made something easy for Kuroba, it's almost as creepy as seeing that devious grin of his forming on his face whenever he reaches into his pockets to pull out who-knows-what. If it hadn't been for the odd hint of relief in his tone I might have actually been scared. I swallowed unintentionally, "How so?"

"You'll see later," He answered vaguely, "The four of us are meeting up -the usual spot- to discuss this. See you there."

Then he hung up on me leaving me to glare at the phone for just a moment, sigh, then get myself ready to go to the usual spot, though not before checking that stupid pocket watch one more time.

Twenty-eight minutes, fifty-five seconds, thirty-nine milliseconds.

...

And so, only moments later the four of us met up at the usual spot- a centrally located park where we wouldn't look like anything other that just four high school boys talking together. However the simple fact that we were now together did nothing to change the fact that none of us really knew anything about why Hattori and I had just been body-swapped again so long after everything had happened.

It was most worrying that it was only Hattori and I affected, why not Shinichi and Hakuba? Was there some kind of reason behind this that we were unaware of? Is there some kind of pattern behind the events? Was there a trigger this time like the heist that occurred last time? These kinds of questions were flying across the picnic table we were sitting at- but naturally remained unanswered.

Even if Shinichi, Hattori, and Hakuba were detectives they were used to having evidence and clues. They couldn't just be asked to explain something inexplicable at the drop of a hat.

With a sigh I mumbled, "So in conclusion, we have nothing."

"Exactly," Shinichi agreed, also sighing.

"Indeed," Hakuba chimed in with a sigh of his own, "I've even informed Shiho and she has no idea what could have happened."

That's not strange considering there was nothing she could do about it before, she's a scientist there's nothing she can do about something of a supernatural nature like this even considering the miraculous nature of the de-aging and re-aging drugs she'd created.

Ran would also know now because she had been with Shinichi when I called him, she would probably tell the rest of the girls about it so they would at least realize that I wasn't Hattori and Hattori wasn't me if they saw either of us but nothing else would likely come of them knowing of this new development.

I even had already texted Akako -not really expecting much seeing as she also wasn't able to actually do anything last time- and she informed me that aside from some kind of coincidental event she didn't know of any reason we would suddenly body swap again and that she would look at Shinichi and Hattori in the morning to see if anything had changed from before.

In other words -as I previously stated- we had nothing.

Nothing to go on, not a single clue what to do about the sudden new development. Not that we had really expected to gain anything from meeting together like this, if anything we'd only met up to feel as though we were actually doing something for the situation.

As soon as we finished entertaining the illusion that there was anything we could do we all returned to what had become our normal lives as though nothing had really happened.


	16. troublesome hopelessness

**Don't worry, I'm not going to let Hakuba and Shinichi off easy, they just get a late start is all. Oh and get ready for some theoretical body-soul connection logic... there's a lot of weird explanations in this chapter.  
**

**In this chapter; answers are given  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review.**

* * *

I sat through the school day, bored as usual. Nothing had actually changed for me as I had neither been body-swapped nor was I near someone that had been swapped like Kudo was. At least nothing should have changed for me. In actuality, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

The prospect that body-swapping a second time was now confirmed as possible was exciting, I longed for it to happen so it would increase the chance of me being able to return to my original body. However instead of becoming Kuroba, Kudo, or myself I remained stuck going to school as Hattori Heiji -which quite frankly, sucked.

The schoolwork I was supposed to be doing wasn't even interesting, I had already covered this material both in England and in Ekoda so this was my third time having to learn this. I was kind of glad to have the recent body-swapping event to think about rather than class, not that thinking about it managed to change the fact that I still had no idea how it could have happened.

Why didn't Kudo and I change? Was there a reason that it had to be Kuroba and Hattori instead of us? Why not all four of us like it as the first time? Will Kudo and I eventually be affected or are we stuck like this forever like we originally thought we would? Is there some kind of condition behind the change? So many questions... I couldn't answer a single one.

...

It was strange to think that the 'Hakuba' sitting a few seats away from me was actually Hattori when I had grown so used to him being Kaito instead. Meanwhile Kaito's off doing who-knows-what with my body -sure, he's matured a lot from his time spent as Hakuba, but he's been wanting to pull pranks for a long time now and I know what he's capable of when he starts thinking... if he gets pranking my body might actually end up in jail, regardless of all the friends I have in the police department.

In the morning nothing seemed strange besides the fact that I had to tell Hattori which desk was his, a task which I carried out discreetly so that our classmates wouldn't notice that 'Hakuba' apparently didn't know which seat was his own despite being a genius.

When it came time for lunch Hattori and I, along with Aoko and Akako, went up to the roof to eat so that anything we talked about would not be overheard not that anyone would believe it if they were to overhear us anyway. Though lunch hour was significantly less fun when Kaito wasn't around to see that I was eating fish.

"Couldn't you guys have just stayed the way you were?" Aoko wondered aloud as Akako was looking at Hattori and I with a strange glare, "Now everyone's going to think I dumped Hakuba for Shinichi!"

I suppose that would be troublesome. As long as it doesn't keep happening over and over it shouldn't be a problem but if we really start switching more then that'll be a huge problem for the girls.

"It's not like we're doin' it 'cause we wanna, ya know?" Hattori replied, he'd already finished his lunch in the ten minutes we'd been on the roof and was now glancing at mine as if he was going to pounce on it any minute now and I wouldn't put it past him.

Aoko sighed, "I know that... but still..."

I could practically see the awkwardness floating in the air, with no desire for things to continue that way I figured I should just change the subject, "So, Akako-san, any idea what might have happened this time?"

The red witch hesitated a moment before responding, "As a matter of fact... I do."

Of course she doesn't, well at least we tried- wait... what? She knows? How on Earth does she know when we have nothing to go on at all? ! Right, I guess Kaito did say she's a 'witch' but still... there should be limits.

I kept myself calm despite the shocked monologue running through my mind, if there's one thing (besides tricks) that I've learned since becoming Kaito it's how to hide behind a poker face. Making sure to appear nonchalant I hesitantly asked, "Is that so? What do you think is happening to us?"

"At the moment, the four of you, your bodies are deteriorating due to friction between your bodies and souls," Adding an opportune hair flip she continued, "Basically, after the body and soul begin to reject each other they continue to do so until neither of them can take it much longer so the soul leave and finds somewhere else to go. Hakuba's body and your body -Kudo-kun- must just be weaker than Kaito's and Hattori-kun's."

Out of the corner of my eyes I could see Hattori smirking at me.

...

As I returned 'home' from a rather average school day of being Kudo Shinichi I found a rather scary woman waiting for me at the gates of the Kudo mansion. The woman I'm referring to is none other than Miyano Shiho, Hakuba's girlfriend.

I know what you're thinking 'Kaito, Shiho-san isn't actually scary' but I assure you she is second only to Akako -who is second only to fish (that's right I said it). Now that she's no longer a little kid and doesn't have to suppress her science-y urges for the sake of normalcy she is positively frightening. Which means I naturally found the fact that she was waiting on me extremely disconcerting.

She was apparently able to pick up on my unease, she rolled her eyes at me, "It's not as if I'm going to dissect you, I've just got to run some tests on your body to make sure that the antidote hasn't had any ill effects."

"Can't you just test yourself?" I asked. It was a legitimate question, she'd taken the same antidote that this body had, wouldn't it be convenient to just run tests on herself and do check ups on Shinichi's body if any weird health problems started showing up? Sure I guess that argument could be rendered invalid by this body-swap basically being a weird health problem that might have an effect on the body but do I really have to be tested? I don't like doctors, why do you think I try to stay healthy all the time?

"Some medical tests are hard to preform on oneself, besides your current body is a better test subject anyway since it took the antidote before I did," She replied dryly, rolling her eyes as though it should have been obvious, "And I need to see if there are any physical reactions to the body-swap."

I sighed, unable to find a reasonable argument, and agreed to let her do the tests -wouldn't want Shinichi's body to go and die off just because I refused to let a mad scientist take a look at whatever it is she needs to look at. She led me to the downstairs lab in the professor's house where she promptly asked me various questions about how I was feeling then told me to lay down as she began to take a blood sample.

"Shinichi sent me a text earlier," Shiho-san suddenly said, tapping away at the keys of a nearby laptop, "your '_witch_' friend apparently was able to understand what's caused this second swap."

The way she said 'witch' made it clear she didn't believe in magic -not that I would have expected her to- but I didn't care enough to point out that Akako really was a creepy witch with real magic, instead I cut to the chase, "and what did she say?"

"Ever since the first swap the connection between your bodies have been breaking down because of dissonance between the body and soul, because the two aren't compatible," She explained, "After a while the body wasn't able to take it so it rejected your soul in order to preserve itself, for whatever reason it's happened in Shinichi's body and Hakuba's bodies first but it should be happening to Hattori's and yours soon enough."

I took a moment to let the explanation sink in, body and soul not compatible, bodies breaking down, souls getting rejected... it actually made sense in a twisted kind of way. I swallowed as the complete understanding hit me, "It's going to happen again then isn't it?"

"Naturally, I hardly expect that your soul is any more compatible with Shinichi's body than it was with Hakuba's."

"So... We'll just keep swapping around until we coincidentally end up back in our original bodies then we'll stop?" I asked, hoping she would have an answer.

"No," She replied, sounding slightly more serious than usual, "If I'm right... you'll keep swapping indefinitely."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The four of you are like... um... one of those stupid toys with four different shaped holes and corresponding pegs," Shiho-san said with a sigh as if using such an elementary illustration was annoying her, "You've somehow managed to get a diamond-shaped peg into a circular hole but both the peg and the hole are damaged because of it..."

I interrupted her, feeling that the air was getting just a bit to tense for my tastes, "Can I be a star instead? Diamonds are just fancy sideways squares. And why is Shinichi a circle?"

"That's not the point," She groaned, pausing just a minute before she continued her illustration, "Anyway, your star-shaped peg isn't the same as it was before -it's changed- and the star-shaped hole is bound to be a little different too. The peg won't be a perfect fit for the hole anymore."

"Crap."

...

"In other words well probably keep switching between the four of us because our bodies are trying to fill a gap that we no longer fit in for the rest of our lives," Kudo asked, looking way to serious for Kuroba's face, but not serious enough for his own.

"An' our bodies are deterioatin' because a' this," I added, probably looking a bit grim, "Dere's no tellin' how long our bodies'll be able ta hold out, but we'll prolly die young."

"Exactly," The supposed witch replied, "There's nothing I can do."

"At least we know the situation though..." Kudo said optimistically, "It'll be troublesome... but at least we know it's coming."

"Yeah... at least," I muttered in agreement, not sure whether or not I actually agreed. It's not as if knowing all of this was going to do us any good, sure, maybe we can prepare some countermeasures for when we switch but otherwise there's really nothing we can do.

It's hopeless.

I checked Hakuba's pocket watch on habit, to see what time it was. Twenty minutes, five seconds, and thirty-nine milliseconds had passed since the beginning of lunch... but it felt like it had been longer.

We sat there for the rest of lunch period in awkward silence.


	17. As if it wasn't bad enough already

**Sorry, it's been so long since I've updated this story... I've just been more focused on other things. I don't have any excuses that I think you would believe so I won't give any -honest or otherwise. I hate to say it but it'll probably be a while before I do another one again, though I'll try to make sure it's not months again, I just have a lot I'm working on right now.  
**

**I was going to have a kinda filler chapter before this one but I could not -for the life of me- ever get around to finishing it. I kept forgetting who was meant to be who for that chapter but ultimately I realized I was never going to finish it so even if it seems to be a bit to quick I'm just going to jump into this twist. I still have what I'd started to write for the chapter between this one and the previous one so maybe I'll finish it someday... yeah not likely.  
**

**In this chapter: It becomes extremely awkward. Not much dialogue but I promise you this; it's only the beginning. (also sorry if the Kaito part is a bit weird, I didn't want them to all be practically the same)  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review.**

* * *

It only took two more days for us to have another random rotation, all four of us switched bodies again. Then it happened again two days after that, then then two days after that, and the next day after that, then the day after that.

Any idiot could have seen that the periods of time between the switches were growing shorter. Of course we were worried by it. If the lapse kept shrinking then it'd be twice a day, then three times and so on until eventual... what would happen?

After all we already knew that we were swapping because our bodies and souls had been damaged by the first swap and that with each swap they were damaged further... our souls would stay in a body for as long as they could tolerate the damage done but since the damage increase each time eventually we'd all just die right? With the time between swaps getting shorter doesn't that mean we only have a little while left?

With this worry in mind the four of us managed to survive another week body swapping at least once everyday as if it were completely average.

* * *

It hadn't taken long to adapt to the body swapping event. I was no longer surprised when I found myself suddenly in a different body, it was starting to seem rather commonplace as though nothing could be more painstakingly mundane than the mysterious phenomena that was occurring between me and my three friends. It had become a part of my daily schedule.

In the morning the first thing I would do upon waking up was confirm my identity, noting the time as a reference to measure the time between swaps as the gaps grew shorter. After that I would simply proceed with my morning in accordance with whomever I happened to be that day; take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and go to school (if it's a school day). Rather simple, but effective.

That day was no different… or rather it was different, but not in that regard. I felt oddly tense immediately upon waking up, something was wrong… but what?

I looked around the room (as that was typically the quickest way to see who I must be), it was very plain with very few signs that anyone had ever lived there, whoever's room this was must have been a very serious person who didn't like to indulge in frivolous things. Whose room was this? I'd never been here before… but I'd already been in everyone else's rooms. Had someone slept over at a friend's house? No, there were so few signs of life that it was clear only one person had ever been in this room.

It was then that I ventured the thought that perhaps I had become someone besides one of our four person party. That seemed to be the only logical conclusion aside from one us having been kidnapped (which also seemed logical enough), half-optimistically I found myself hanging on to the first of my conclusions rather than the second.

I raised my hand to observe it. Pale skin, I definitely wasn't Hattori (Thank God). Long, thin fingers, they seemed agile which made me think of Kuroba for a moment before discarding the notion at the sight of the long, manicured fingernails. This was a woman's hand.

"I'm… female?" I concluded with a gulp, looking downward only to find further proof that I had been right. I carefully pulled a bit of short hair in front of my face. Dirty blonde with a reddish hue, some might say auburn or strawberry blonde. I did not like were this was going, not one bit.

A mirror, there had to be a mirror around here somewhere. Soon enough I found a small hand mirror in a drawer that contained plenty of things that confirmed my hypothesis before I even looked in the mirror.

I was Miyano Shiho, previously known as Haibara Ai, my current girlfriend.

Suddenly being female I could take but to be her specifically was to much for me. I would have been a bit disturbed but still completely okay had it been any other girl, but there's just something completely wrong with suddenly being in my girlfriend's body.

Not to mention... if I'm in her body what's happened to her?

I looked around the room, searching for her cell phone so that I could get in contact with the others.

If something like this was happening I certainly wasn't the only one effected by it, at the very least Shiho was affected as well, but I doubt it would be restricted to just the two of us... the universe is a bit too cruel for that. All four of us were probably affected... or maybe all eight of us? That could get quite messy.

Finally I found her phone, and sent a text to my own cellphone as well as those of Kudo, Kuroba, and Hattori with a sigh.

...

I woke up to light shining on my face through a window. I was tired but somehow it seemed like it'd be a hassle to just roll over and go back to sleep so I lazily lifted my hand to my face and tried to rub the sleepiness from my eyes.

That's when I realized my face felt a bit different than it had when I'd fallen asleep, I must've body-swapped while I was asleep... again. That was common enough so I wasn't really surprised in the slightest.

I wondered for a moment who I'd become this time. Would I be Hakuba? Hattori? Kaito? Maybe even myself for a change. It was almost as if all of this had become a game.

I sat up in the bed and immediately felt that there was something wrong, something terribly wrong, but that was a common enough feeling for me so I pushed it to the back of my mind. I stretched my arms and kicked my legs to the side of the bed where I came face to face with a mirror.

I screamed.

It couldn't have been happening, the person I'd become wasn't supposed to be involved in this... and yet there were no signs of it being a disguise, no signs of any other sort of trickery, the mirror wasn't lying.

"Ran, Are you okay I heard you scream?" Ojii-san asked as he opened the door to -you guessed it- Ran's room, stumbling in in his pajamas. The fact that he didn't seem surprised at all to see me there was proof that I had indeed somehow body-swapped with Ran.

"I'm fine, I just had a weird dream then when I looked in the mirror I thought I saw a g-ghost... but it was just the curtain," I answered Ojii-san, hoping that he would find that to be a reasonable enough reason that his daughter would have screamed. He took my excuse about as well as I expected him to, simply giving me a strange look, shrugging, then leaving to go watch Yoko on tv or something.

So I was no left alone... in my girlfriend's body... stuff like this just shouldn't happen. Ever.

Not to mention if I was in Ran's body what had happened to Ran? I mean without assuming that one of the other girls also became involved logically she'd have to be in either my body, Hakuba's, Hattori's, or Kaito's...

I decided the best thing to do would be to send a text around to figure out who's who and get everyone to meet up. So I picked up Ran's cellphone which was laying on her dresser and began to dial but I had only managed to type one of our cellphone numbers in before the door burst open.

It was me... or rather Ran in my body.

...

I had to pee. That was my first thought when I woke up.

There was a weird shift in weight as I sat up in bed but I thought nothing of it at the time, I was far more focused on getting to the toilet at the end of the hallway. It wasn't until after I'd... relieved myself that my eyes caught on the bathroom mirror.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to prevent myself from shouting, and rushed back to the room I'd come from.

I was in Kazuha's body... Was this the universe's attempt at a joke? I wasn't laughing, not at all.

For me to be in Kazuha's body she must be in someone else's, but whose? I guess it could been any of the four of us... but what if she isn't the only one involved that wasn't before? Could the four of us and each of our respective girlfriends all been swapped in a chaotic mismatch?

Well I guess there's no point in speculating about that kind of thing, it's probably right anyway.

I guess we need to meet up and figure out what's going on... Just as the thought crossed my mind a cellphone buzzed on the dresser, Kazuha's cellphone of course. According to the phone it was a call from 'Heiji'.

Well, this oughta be good, I thought as I picked up the phone, answering with a polite but curious "Hello, who might dis be?"

"It's Kazuha ya idiot! What de heck is goin' on Heiji?" Came a somewhat muffled shout as if she (...he?) were afraid that someone might hear her if she was too loud, she (he... oh whatever Kazuha is a girl darnit!) probably screamed when she realized that she'd become me and so she was trying to keep quiet so that my parents wouldn't think that I'd gone crazy or something.

"I don't know, apparently you an' maybe de other girls are involved in dis now..." I sighed, "Wait, how'd ya know it was me an' not someone else?"

"Dunno," she said as if she was just realizing how odd it was that she'd been so certain that it was me, "It jus' kin'a made sense I guess."

Ah whatever I'll just chalk that one up to her being in my awesome detective body, must've made her better at being analytical and detective or something. Yeah that must be it.

"Hakuba-kun sent a text as Shiho-san sayin' dat he thought we all needed ta meet up at de usual spot," She said after a brief silence, "I figured I should tell ya."

So Hakuba's his girlfriend right now too... maybe we've all swapped with our respective girlfriends, but why? Why should they suddenly be involved when they hadn't been before?

"Ai'ght, guess I'll see ya there den," I said, and just as I was about to put the phone down so I could get dressed or whatever else I'd need to do to prepare to go out Kazuha spoke up one last time before hanging up.

"Ya'd better not do 'nethin' weird in my body, 'kay?"

...

I had stayed up all night making plans for my next heist, so of course I hadn't gone to sleep and didn't get to just wake up and discover that I'd been body swapped with my girlfriend as the others did no matter how much simpler that would have been.

I'll just start from the point where it started to get weird.

I was almost done with plan B (you know in case plan A didn't work out so well) when I put my pencil down and reached for my coffee cup, after taking a sip or two I put the cup back down and went to pick the pencil up again but found myself holding a mop instead.

For whatever reason that seemed to be the most normal thing in the world at the time so I didn't question it at all, rather I began to walk down an interesting blue and white checkered pathway with my new trusty mop in hand despite the fact that I'd been sitting in a chair only moments before. Along the path I saw several odd things but what caught my eye most was a flash of white that I recognized all too well just out of the corner of my eye.

I followed it and pretty soon I found myself face to face with Kaitou Kid -or rather face to monocle, I couldn't actually see his face.

It was at that point that I realized how weird all of this had been, not just because I'm Kaitou Kid so baring the few times I got Shinichi to help out when he was in my body there should be no other Kid, but because at that point he kissed me.

Then suddenly he turned into a fish and started chasing me... it was honestly the most frightening thing I've experienced in my entire life.

I jolted upright in bed. It only took me a few seconds to realize that I must've just been body swapped and that what just happened was actually a dream, which was kind of a relief.

Instead of doing the smart thing and looking around the room which would have probably let me know what body I was in right away I couldn't stop myself from thinking about that dream (or maybe I should say nightmare instead). I just automatically assumed that one of the other guys had been dreaming about chasing Kaitou Kid -me- and then kissing him, which freaked me out just a little bit.

So I was actually pretty relieved when I realized that I was in Aoko's body and that had been Aoko's still extremely weird dream, it was better than it having been Hakuba's like I had half suspected for an awkward moment.


	18. slipping through the cracks

**I feel like this hasn't quite lived up to the awkwardness that it's capable of, starting next chapter I'll start including the girls parts as well but there will only ever be four perspectives (not counting random third person) per chapter, so I hope that makes it more interesting. Next chapter I'll explain why the girls are getting caught up in this now of all times so this is basically filler but it has some kinda important points as well so don't just ignore it. Also, I plan to start listing who is who at the beginning and end of chapters now that eight people will be scrambling... hope it helps.  
**

**I had trouble at first coming up with what should happen for Hakuba's and Hattori's parts in this chapter, but ultimately Hakuba wound up taking a nice sledge hammer to the forth wall and Hattori wound up actually progressing the story (mostly because his personality seemed most funny with this scene)... it makes me feel bad for Shinichi and Hakuba's surprisingly insignificant roles in this chapter...  
**

**In this chapter: Shinichi stops caring about nonsense, Kaito has a woman's intuition, Hakuba nearly gives in to paranoia, and Hattori actually gets somewhere  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review it doesn't matter if it's short or long or if you like the story or not (though I can't imagine anyone getting this far without liking it).**

* * *

"Shinichi!" Ran in my body said a little bit louder than I would have liked as she rushed towards me, "What's going on?!"

In hindsight I have no idea how she knew it was me and not someone else in her body, but I thought nothing of it at the time, and by this point I know better than to question that sort of frivolous thing.

"I guess we've been body swapped... the others probably have been as well, I'm not sure why something like this would be happening now..." I replied with a sigh.

It made no sense to me that Ran and maybe even the other girls would be swapped with me now after she had remained uninvolved as long as she had, but nothing about this made sense anyway

"But... why now?"

"I don't know..." Was the only reply I could give.

Suddenly my cell phone went off in her pocket, she tossed it to me -it was, after all, my phone- and I looked down to see that I had received a text from Shiho asking all of us to meet up at her house and to bring our respective girlfriends sighed by Hakuba. I was then hit with the sinking feeling that I had been correct and that the other girls had indeed been pulled into this.

I told Ran and she and I complied immediately... after she helped me pick out an outfit.

...

I'm not sure why but it just seemed to make sense that if I'd become Aoko then it was only natural that she'd become me, so with that assumption in mind I rushed to my house so that I would be able to talk to her. In hindsight I probably could have just called her on the phone and it would have worked just as well but it's not like my house was all that far away so it doesn't really matter.

I wasn't really sure how much time had passed since the swap had happened, after all time can pass in the strangest ways when you're asleep, so I couldn't be certain that Aoko would still be awake, but I had been awake in the secret Kid room so at least she was probably still there and I doubted that she would be able to sleep after suddenly being switched out with me. I was right, of course.

Upon reaching the Kid room I found her (or would it be him since she's me?) sitting at the desk that I had been not all that long ago. She (ugh this is confusing, she's still a girl on the inside even if she's me) looked kind of scared, but I guess that makes sense any normal person would find it scary to just suddenly be someone else.

"Aoko?" I asked, realizing that she didn't know I was there and that I actually had no evidence proving that it was indeed Aoko in my body and not someone else entirely, not that I needed evidence I'm not a detective as a thief I trust my intuition.

She tensed up upon hearing the name, I guess she really hadn't been able to tell that I'd been there, or maybe she was just surprised that I'd guessed correctly.

"Kaito?" She asked in turn, now looking at me with an expression of horror as though me being in her body was something from one of her worst nightmares which had now become reality. What was so wrong with it, it's not like I haven't disguised myself as her in the past, I already knew just about every dark secret that she had.

"Yeah," I replied cheerfully, acting as if it were no big deal in hopes of cheering her up a bit, "looks like you and I have swapped. I wonder if anything's happened to everyone else?"

At that point my cellphone which had been sitting on the desk in front of her began to buzz. I picked it up, it was a text from Shiho-san according to the phone but upon reading its contents I knew that it had been sent by Hakuba, who was apparently now in her body. He was asking if everyone (girls included) could meet up at the professor's house, as it would look weird for eight teenagers to be hanging out at the park this early in the morning.

I told Aoko about what it said and we soon set out for the professor's house though she still hadn't returned to her usual cheerful demeanor. Of course our destination was pretty far away so we had to take the shinkansen, I tried to make chat a few times along the way but she just seemed distant and just gave short answers. I finally managed to figure out what was wrong by making use of something I never thought I'd have the chance to do myself.

"Ne, what's wrong?" I asked, leaning and whispering right into her ear, "Kaitou Kid~"

That was the only thing I could think to do that I knew would automatically snap her mind from whatever she was thinking about to reply, because in the time that I'd been Kid it'd been such a common thing for people to accuse me of being Kid that the reflexive response had become a part of me.

She automatically tensed up, and responded a little bit louder than she probably meant to, "Nothing! I'm not Kaitou Kid!"

"I know, _I'm_ Kid after all," I replied, glad to have succeeded in distracting her for a moment even if I still wished she'd tell me what was bothering her so. At the same time it occurred to me that I -Kaitou Kid- was currently in the body of Nakamori-keibu's daughter, oh the irony.

She gave me a weak smile, she probably realized that I had been trying to cheer her up.

"What's on your mind?" I asked.

She sighed, "I guess I was just worried... what if I screwed up and someone figures out that 'Kuroba Kaito' was Kid because of something I do or..."

"Oh... so basically you're worried you can't be quite as me as I am?"

"Yeah, something like that," She said, sounding a bit closer to being the usual Aoko that I'd come to love.

For the rest of the train ride we continued to chat, and she gradually reached the point where she no longer seemed to be jumpy... I could tell she was still worried but I also knew that nothing I could say was going to make her worries disappear completely, she needed to talk with the other girls for that, so I didn't mention it again.

…

It wasn't too long before the eight of us were all gathered in the professor and Shiho's living room in a chaotic jumble. The girls (boys) swapping horror stories about how they'd realized they'd become involved, as the other guys (girls) and I tried to see if there was any common factor that may have caused the girls to get dragged into this –and we found one but that will be explained later, it didn't make much sense anyway.

Honestly I had expected as much but it just seemed a bit to perfect that all four of us had been body swapped with our own respective girlfriend, there had to be a pattern to it, it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. Assuming that something happened without our knowledge that caused the girls to be brought into this mess, it seemed to be against the odds that each of them would be placed in their boyfriend's body and that we –in turn- would each be placed in our girlfriend's bodies. Wouldn't it have made more sense to be more shuffled, scrambled even?

It occurred to me that I'd noticed a hint of a pattern the first time we'd been swapped as well, it had come to my attention rather early on that we'd been swapped into the most dissonant possible arrangement. Though at the time I'd thought that had been more of a complaint on my part for having been placed in Hattori's body, and it was easily dismissed as a coincidence.

Now, however I couldn't help but feel that it may have been planned by someone… something, though the notion seemed a bit paranoid. After all, how could anyone or anything manipulate a mysterious happenstance such as this, the only sort of person I could think that could do that would be a witch, but it's become increasingly apparent that Akako-san -despite apparently being a skilled witch- is not able to do anything about this.

The notion itself I found a bit disturbing but I don't think I would have been surprised if I'd ever found out that it was true.

Maybe it is true, maybe all our current actions were calculated by some as-yet-unknown individual who just enjoys watching us suffer meaninglessly. Even if that were the case I suppose there's very little that we could do in such a situation, it's better just to ignore any possibility that such an entity could even exist to begin with.

_Ya got that? I don' care who ya are but I'm ignoring you!_

... If we ever take care of this situation I'm getting a therapist.

...

Kazuha and I met up at the station and were soon on our way to the Professor's house, where Hakuba had requested for everyone to meet up. We didn't talk much along the way; there was mostly just awkward silence… I guess there wasn't really anything to say. We were each other, Hakuba was Shiho, and it didn't take a genius to assume that Kudo was probably Ran and Kuroba was probably Aoko.

At least we could take solace in the fact that this wasn't happening to just us, it'd happened to all eight of us as unlikely as it seemed if you tried to look at it from a logical perspective.

Anyway since the ride over was boring I'll just skip to us getting there.

We had been the last to arrive and everyone else seemed to be on edge for one reason or another, I'm not entirely sure why as they all refused to tell me, but I can make a guess. Hakuba seemed to have picked up a bit of Shiho's paranoia when he crossed into her body, meanwhile she was trying to figure out what had happened differently this time than the other times we'd swapped around to have involved the girls –to no avail. Kudo looked kind of defeated, I guess he must've given up on trying to understand all of this and decided to just take it as it comes, while Ran just seemed kind of fidgety so I figured she just needed to go to the bathroom or something but didn't want to. Kuroba seemed to be trying to cheer up a rather stressed looking Aoko, even though he looked like he had clearly needed some cheering up himself.

I guess Kazuha and I had things pretty much together in comparison.

With our arrival everyone just began to carry on as if everything were normal, the awkwardness was still laying beneath the surface but we all just kind of looked past it like we weren't confused or worried about what was going on at all. Those of us who had previously been boys split of into a group and those who had previously been our girlfriends split off into a different group.

"It's obvious that somethin` musta happened given da circumstances," Hakuba stated, "But was there anything that all 'a us did yesterday ta trigger a change?"

"Yesterday..." Kuroba replied, "Aoko and I went to a magic show together, we went and ate at a nearby cafe afterwords."

A date then, how sweet of him. I bet she enjoyed the magic show more than he did though, he probably just spent the whole time trying to figure out their tricks.

"Oh, As fer me Shiho an' I were here experimentin' wit' DNA samples fer most a' the day," Hakuba added.

Also a date... or about as close as those two ever get to normal romance. Really, they're a pretty strange couple, but they both seem to have improved as human beings since they met each other.

"Kazuha and I went to see a movie then got dinner together," I admitted. It hadn't been too fancy or anything but with this whole body swapping thing everyone's had to keep dates pretty basic because the girls could never be absolutely certain which body their date would be showing up in and they didn't want their friends to think they were being unfaithful.

Of course that was making it quite clear that the point was all four of us had gone on a date (or at least spent time with) our girlfriends, that was almost definitely the connection, Kudo's testimony was the only thing that could prove this hypothesis.

Suddenly Kudo realized that everyone was staring at him, with a sigh he answered his part, "Ran and I went to Tropical land for a date, but a murder wound up happening and that pretty much killed any thoughts of it being a date."

Sounds like a normal Kudo-date to me. That pretty much happens every time for them, I'm surprised they haven't seen it as a omen as to the future of their relationship.

Anyway, with that it was clear. We'd all gone on dates... but what did that have to do with anything?


	19. I told you only time would tell

**Ugh, finally got this up. Sorry if everything's happening a bit too fast... and some things seem a bit strange, but I thought this would be most interesting, it's no fun if you just get answers without getting any new questions. Also as you may be able to see I have began listing the current status of the swaps(it's their initials) at the beginning and end of each chapter (because there will be the occasional mid chapter swap from this point on), I hope you find it helpful.  
**

**In this chapter: They finally get some answers, Ran has an unsettling feeling, Edogawa Conan returns, Shiho is concerned  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review it doesn't matter if it's short or long or if you like the story or not (though I can't imagine anyone getting this far without liking it).**

* * *

**KS=MR, HS=MS, KK=NA, HH=TK  
**

* * *

There was honestly nothing else I could do about the situation so -much to my dismay- I called Akako, hoping that there would be something she could do about this despite her earlier uselessness.

She was busy –something about gathering potion ingredients before the coming full moon- and couldn't come but she at least had the time to talk so I put her on speaker phone after explaining that we'd all switched bodies with our respective girlfriends after having gone on dates with them.

"I see…" She said afterward, from her tone I could tell that she understood something about this that we hadn't and that something annoyed her a little bit... or maybe I was just reading too much into it.

"Is there anything you can do about this, Akako-san?" Shinichi asked, I think he must've picked up on the same subtle hint in her tone that I had.

"I don't know that there's anything that can be done… but the eight of you should stay pretty stable for a while now" She replied, "It should be a few days at the least, maybe a month at the most before you start changing again."

"Eh? Why's dat?" Hattori asked, sounding glad that for the time being we would at least have some consistency in our lives.

I guess I was glad too, but the fact that there was still no way to fix this still bothered me. I'd have preferred the girls staying uninvolved to us suddenly having a few days without worrying that we might suddenly be someone else… after all this was slowly wearing us down physically and mentally, our days were numbered, and now the same could be said for the girls.

"I'm sure you've heard of the idea of 'soul mates' before?" She said in faintly bitter tone, we all gave some confirmation and she continued, "The term comes from the idea that souls can have various shapes, people whose souls are similar shapes tend to get along very well so it's become romanticized over the years… the four of you each have souls approximately the same shape as those of your girlfriend's."

"So, our souls will fit in de gaps in their bodies an` vice versa?" Hakuba asked, she confirmed and he continued, "But this isn't a permanent fix, `cause fer de four a' us our bodies and souls have already been damaged. Our souls can't completely fill each other's gaps… isn't that right?"

If you're confused then I'll just try to explain with the example that Shiho had given us all a while back using that toy with the pegs and the holes. Our pegs had splintered because they kept getting forced into holes they didn't fit in and the holes were breaking around the edges because of the forced entry. But even though the girls had just swapped they weren't damaged yet. Aoko had just put her star shaped peg into my broken star hole, and I'd put my broken star peg into her star hole.

Wow that came out sounded a bit more awkward than intended. Point is, the girls are fine, if we can find some way to get them to swap back to their correct bodies first then nothing should have happened to them.

"Exactly."

"But why are they swapping with us now when they hadn't before?" I asked.

"I'm not entirely sure but over the course of each of your dates your souls must have 'cried out' so to speak, and the girl's souls each moved to help you in any way that they could," She stated. I got the feeling that she was just making that explanation up because it sounded pretty ridiculous, but I didn't say anything because she was the closest thing we had to an expert on how supernatural stuff works.

...

"-and den when I looked in da mirror I realized dat I wasn't myself but Heiji!" Kazuha-chan said in an excited tone, "I was so freaked out dat I jus' kinda stood dere in fron' a' de mirror and stared at my own reflection fer at least ten minutes a'fore I understood what must'a happened an' called Heiji."

Shiho-chan replied with what could only be described as a chuckle, "Sounds like you've had quite the morning."

"What about you Ran-chan? How did you realize that you'd turned into Shinichi-kun?" Aoko-chan asked, I think just trying to make sure that Kazuha-chan didn't wind up trying to pick a fight with Shiho-chan by averting the subject to me.

I don't think I should have to say that I was uncomfortable, having found myself suddenly in Shinichi's body. Any normal person wouldn't be comfortable in such a situation, as it is I'm surprised that the guys have come to accept it as just another part of their lives.

I was glad that I at least wasn't alone in this. Kazuha-chan, Aoko-chan, and Shiho-chan were all in the same boat as I was for this. But the small comfort that knowing I wasn't the only one gave me wasn't enough to ease the growing feeling that this was just the beginning of something terrible.

I'd had feelings like this before, like on the day that Shinichi first became Conan when I felt like I would never see him again. I guess I should be glad that my feeling at that time was mistaken, but what if I wasn't wrong this time? What if this body swapping thing was just the beginning of something even worse?

"Ran-chan, are you alright?" Kazuha-chan asked, her tone was worried, "Yer lookin' a bit pale."

I felt fine, I told them as much but Shiho-chan suddenly looked more worried than I'd ever seen her and put her hand to my forehead.

"You're burning up!" She exclaimed, "Tell me, have you felt strange at all since you woke up in that body?!"

What a stupid question! Of course I felt strange! I suddenly woke up as my boyfriend, that's not normal! I managed to not shout at her as I replied, "Yeah… a bit."

"In what ways?"

I started to tell her that very few things that morning hadn't been strange for me, but then it happened.

I can't even begin to accurately explain how it felt… but I'll try. There was enough pain that I doubled over before I even realized that what I was feeling was pain. I felt hot, like I was standing in the middle of a volcano, seconds away from going up in flames. Everything I saw in front of me was overcome by bright flashes of colors.

Then it stopped, I still felt terrible but it had dissipated.

Shiho-chan's eyes widened with understanding, she knew what was happening to Shinichi's body and that made me think that maybe I knew too, she helped me to the couch.

Bewildered Kazuha-chan and Aoko-chan both stuttered out something along the lines of 'are you okay', which I replied to with a shaking, "I think I'm alright now..."

...

So now we at least knew why the girls had become involved, but we were no closer now to being able to fix any of this than we had been the first time that any of this had happened. We were still completely stuck.

Our only illusion of hope seemed to be to rely on the chance that in a few days we might swap with the girls again and all wind up in the correct bodies, but even if that happened by some miracle we didn't even know if we would remain stable after that. As far as we knew we might wind up like this for the rest of our lives however long that might be.

The four of us understood that much without even a word about it passing between us. We've actually gotten to the point where we understand each other pretty well, I guess that's one of the only good things that's come out of all this body swapping nonsense.

The unspoken truth that the four of us -and if nothing was done eight of us- likely wouldn't live much longer, originally we'd had no intention of telling the girls but the way things were going it didn't seem like we were going to have much of a choice. If they were going to be involved from now on then they needed to know exactly what the situation truly is... but none of us wanted to tell them.

After a few moments of actual talk it was decided that we would definitely tell them if any of them switched into a body besides one that their soul would theoretically fit into. Somewhere in the back of our minds we probably all knew that it was to much to hope for them to stay safe, with eight bodies and two being 'safe' for each of their souls that would only be a one in four chance of winding up with a match... the odds were not in their favor -or ours for that matter.

"Meitantei-kun, is something wrong?" Kaito spoke up suddenly.

"That came out of nowhere," I reply, "there's nothing wrong."

He leans in really close to me, his face locked in a very serious expression, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, of course I'm sure," I say, feeling a bit uncomfortable with his face only inches from mine, "er... why do you ask?"

He pulls away, "Because you look like you're about to cry."

Hattori and Hakuba were also looking but didn't dare mention it, I suppose they must've been worried that I might get over emotional with my new found female hormones and flip out on them if they said anything that might imply that I was acting strange. I guess that's a pretty good reason to keep quiet, I probably would have done the same if I were in their positions.

I reached up to touch my face, it felt cold and I could feel a tear threatening to fall from my eye… but why? What was this feeling? Why did I feel so sad all of a sudden? It felt like it must have been really important but I just couldn't understand.

"I'm fine… I think," I say, but it's a lie, something's wrong I just don't know what it is.

Hesitantly the others went along with it but I could still feel their watchful gazes on me, they didn't believe for a moment that I was really fine.

There wasn't anything left for the four of us to talk about by that point but we repeated some of what we'd said before anyway as if to give ourselves the illusion that we were actually doing something about this situation and not just sitting around doing nothing.

That's when we heard it, Ran's scream.

I could feel my eyes widen with understanding as everything went black.

...

Edogawa Conan was back.

The very thought sent a shiver down my spine.

Shinichi's body shrank again, that means that my body will invariably also shrink again (maybe in months, maybe in days, but it was definitely going to happen). My antidote wasn't permanent. Body swapping isn't the only thing we were going to have to worry about at the moment. We needed to find a pretext for Conan to start going to school again (and later one for 'Haibara Ai' as well), luckily Ran (or Shinichi at the moment) knows who Conan really is so that'll make most of the back story nonsense unnecessary but we'll still need to come up with an excuse for her father's sake, and for the school.

It also worried me that at the same time that Shinichi's body reverted back to being Conan again Shinichi (in Ran's body) fell unconscious. Ran had also fallen unconscious but that was perfectly understandable, after all she was probably shocked by how painful the transformation from teen to child is, but there didn't seem to be any reason for Shinichi to have fainted. I couldn't help but wonder if there was some kind of connection between them that'd caused it.

If there was some kind of connection between the two of them was it because they were in each other's bodies, or did such a connection exist between the two of them to begin with? Maybe an empathy link or something… I suppose it wouldn't be impossible, given the circumstances.

I could practically feel my brain cells dying at the thought of something so far beyond the normal bounds of reason, but I couldn't reject the possibility when I was already experiencing a strange phenomenon being inside by boyfriend's body.

Then again, who am I to say that it's impossible for Shinichi and Ran to have some sort of empathy link, I'm just a scientist, not a sorceress or witch by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not an expert on supernatural happenings.

That should be more than enough rambling about things that probably don't even matter for the time being. I'm sure you would appreciate it greatly if we moved along with the plot.

I had been thinking the things above as I waited for Shinichi and Ran to return to consciousness. The small boy on the couch shifted a bit before sitting up.

"Are you okay?" I asked, mostly because it was normal to ask such a thing under the circumstances rather than out of genuine curiosity regarding his/her (?) well being.

"... Eh Haibara?" Was the immediate response.

I admit, I was a bit surprised by it, after all the only person that still called me 'Haibara' even after I'd returned to my adult body was Shinichi. I'm not sure if he simply called me that out of habit or if it was supposed to be symbolic that he didn't acknowledge that I was 'Miyano Shiho' who created APOTOXIN4869, but this confirmed that the person now in that body was Shinichi. That means Ran must've returned to her own body while they were unconscious. Interesting.

"Eh?" He said again, this time seeming more surprised, "My voice is... No, it can't be..."

I didn't say anything, it was amusing enough just watching him.

After a moment he seemed to have finally come to terms with the fact that he'd returned to being Conan... again. He sighed, talking more to himself than to me, "I finally get back to my body, only to be stuck as Conan again."

* * *

**KS=EC, MR, HS=MS, KK=NA, HH=TK **


	20. The stuff of Nightmares

**For my convenience when Shinichi's body is small is will be referred to as Conan's body by basically everyone, even if everyone important at this point knows that Conan and Shinichi are the same person it's best to treat the situation as if they were different . Also, I don't have much of a plan for where this is going (though there is a bit of one) so I apologize if it continues to take a long periods of time for me to finish chapters. It should (and I would like to emphasize SHOULD) all make sense soonish... well relative to the plotline at least at the rate I've been going the expository chapters will probably come out months from now.  
**

**Suddenly I feel like things are about to get more serious in this story... in a way that I hope will be funny to most of you because this story is -after all- my odd attempt at humor. And sorry if everyone is getting too OOC (especially Hakuba in this chapter), I'm having to keep up with who calls whom what and which habits/skills/unexplainable-powers have been picked up by who... with eight peoples traits being passed around it's becomeing somewhat difficult.  
**

**In this chapter: Kazuha has a vauge premonition, Kaito discovers his worst nightmare, Ran has a fairly normal life all things considered, Hakuba tries to adjust to life as an adult female  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review it doesn't matter if it's short or long or if you like the story or not (though I can't imagine anyone getting this far without liking it).**

* * *

**KS=EC, MR, HS=MS, KK=NA, HH=TK**

* * *

After Heiji and I had left the others at the professor's house I already had an unsettling feeling, I couldn't pin it but I just knew that something bad was going to happen. Somehow that feeling was reinforced as when I almost started to walk to my house instead of Heiji's -I caught myself of course but I still didn't like it that I was already getting off to a bad start in pretending to be him.

It was pretty late when I got "home" so I just fixed myself some instant ramen to eat then went to bed without bothering to change into pajamas. I was asleep in seconds.

I had a dream that night... if you can call it a dream. It didn't really seem like anything at first but I latter realized that it was much more important than I could have ever guessed.

It was dark, the kind of dark that makes you begin to wish that you were part cat because you know that a flashlight just wouldn't do you any good at all. I could see a small light in the distance I took a step towards it but I was quickly pulled further back into the darkness.

"You idiot! Are you trying to get yourself killed?!" I recognized the voice, it was Shinichi-kun or maybe Kaito-kun, sometimes it's hard to tell. His voice wasn't even loud enough to be considered a whisper but it still felt like he was yelling at me. I turned to get a look at him.

Shinichi-kun definitely, at least going by appearance who knows who it is on the inside. Maybe it wasn't him though, after all he's 'Conan' again now, so maybe it's someone else in disguise? Am I reading too much into this? Why the heck am I dreaming about Shinichi-kun anyway?

He gave a somewhat paranoid glance in both directions before whispering again, "Like I said before, I'll distract them. You just need to get away as quickly as possible, I think we both know that if they see you there's no way they'll let you get away... I'll at least have a chance."

"A slim one at best," I reply, my voice almost a sneer even in whisper. I didn't mean to say it, it just kinda came out on it's own. It's not my voice though, or Heiji's, but I knew the voice I just couldn't place it.

He seemed to laugh a bit at that, "A slim chance is better than none at all. Besides... I think that this was supposed to happen, Kazuha-san made me a charm the other day, at first I wasn't sure why but now I'm pretty sure she somehow knew this was going to happen."

He pulls a string out of his shirt and sure enough there's a charm on it. It's looks an awful lot like something I would make for Heiji, especially with the word 'anti-murder' written clearly on the front of it, I probably would have laughed if the situation didn't seem so serious.

Shinichi-kun looks over towards the light that I saw in the distance earlier, "He's getting closer, you'd better hurry, I'll do what I can..."

He pushes me a bit making me turn away from him and away from the light, I hear the faint tap of his footsteps and say, "You'd better not die, she isn't done waiting for you yet."

"I know," He says, pausing a moment before running off as I ran in the opposite direction.

At that I woke up.

The dream had felt so real that while I was dreaming it I almost couldn't tell it was a dream. What was that even about anyway? I felt like he was talking to me but at the same time it was like I was just watching from someone else's point of view... but whose? And more importantly, why?

I spent all day wondering if there was some kind of meaning behind all of this or if I should just not eat instant ramen before bed anymore, but I didn't tell anyone about that dream... I probably should have.

...

The day after the eight of us all met together was Monday, and as you might can guess that means that we all had to go to school (except for Hakuba because Shiho-san doesn't go to school).

For the most part the girls (excluding Shiho-san for some reason) seemed to be nervous that they'd do a terrible job of acting like us but we assured them that there was nothing they could do to make us seem any weirder in our classmates eyes than we already do (still if they acted too normal that could be a problem). On the other hand, Heiji and Shinichi both seemed a bit bothered by the fact that they were going to have to go to school wearing skirts, even if they were currently girls they seemed to think that doing that would be a serious blow to their masculine pride.

I -of course- didn't see it as any different than cross-dressing for a disguise. I mean, I've disguised myself as women plenty of times. I'll feel every bit as manly wearing a skirt as I would if I were wearing the most manly of all pants.

Aoko actually did a pretty good job of acting as me, aside from not pulling any pranks or flipping any skirts... though I guess I can understand how she might feel on the later of those two, especially because at the moment I'm the most likely target for skirt flipping. I probably deserve it but that doesn't mean that I won't start chasing her with a mop if she tries.

It was actually pretty calm until lunch when the worst possible thing imaginable happened. I'm talking the stuff of nightmares here, worse than anything you can possibly imagine under normal circumstances.

Shiho-san and Akako met.

Shiho-san had asked me if I would introduce her to my 'witch friend' at the beginning of the lunch period, and I couldn't find any legitimate reason to refuse the request. Leaving me with no choice.

"So you're the '_witch_' I've been hearing about?" Shiho-san said with a glare that reminded me of when Hakuba had first begun to suspect me of being Kid. Her tone made it clear that she wanted to believe that magic was utter nonsense but was starting to think that it might as well be possible with everything that's been happening lately.

"That's right," Akako replied, casting a glare of her own as if to say that she didn't appreciate the tone that Shiho was speaking with, "And you're Hakuba-kun's girlfriend, the tsundere _scientist_, if I'm not mistaken?"

"The 'tsundere' part is a bit inaccurate," she replied without missing a beat.

Akako ignored the last bit and turned to me, "So did the two of you come to ask questions about what I told the 'boys' yesterday, or were you just looking to talk to me, Kuroba?"

"Actually it was Shiho-san that wanted to-" I started, but was soon interrupted by the person in question.

"I want you to teach me magic," Shiho-san said, her expression and tone both filled with the utmost seriousness. She continued, "Even if I wind up not being able to use it, I'd still like you to teach me about how it works. What goes into what kind of potion, the insubstantial energy that makes it possible to preform spells, anything that can be taught."

An image flashed in my mind of Shiho-san wearing a traditional witch costume, she waved a crooked staff ominously as she cackled, no doubt she was casting some sort of sinister spell. I found Shiho-san creepy enough already, the very idea of her trying to intermingle magic and science legitimately scared me. In attempt to banish the image of Shiho-san the evil witch from my mind I tried to imagine instead the younger version of her -Haibara-san- in the sort of magical girl costume that shows up in children's anime... _'Mahou Shoujo Ai-chan_' or something like that, that actually made me feel a bit better about the idea.

...

No matter how hard I try I can't forget it. It wasn't even the same body I'm in now, yet I can still remember what I'd felt with all too vivid clarity. That pain... Shinichi's pain.

Was it always like that? Did it always hurt so much to change back into Conan? It must, otherwise Shiho-san wouldn't have realized what was happening so quickly... it's probably just as painful the other way around too.

How could I be so stupid? I knew that something was wrong with Shinichi each time I saw him after Conan first appeared, why didn't I realize how much pain he was in? Why didn't I do something to help him... I tried, but never hard enough to make any kind of difference, he always just pushed me away -trying to protect me even though he was in worse shape.

It almost hurts that I'm just finding this out now, after so long. He should have told me.

It's all I can think about in class all day, Sonoko seemed to think that I was just sad that Shinichi had disappeared again I told her that wasn't it but I doubt I was able to convince her of anything.

I guess I can be glad about one thing though, Shinichi and I switched back for some reason. Shinichi trying to act like me probably would have made Sonoko worry even more than me just acting a little strange... not that I think I would have done any better acting as Shinichi or Conan (whichever the case may have been), most people would see Shinichi/Conan's behavior patterns as strange anyway but it's still probably better for him to be himself if only because he hasn't in so long.

It's thanks to being myself rather than Shinichi that I was able to maintain the illusion in my own mind that everything was completely fine. I was me, I was at school but Shinichi wasn't there, when I got home I would start preparing dinner and Conan would come home, he would do his homework, and everything would be normal... only one problem with that. I knew the truth.

I might be me now but for all I know that could change at any moment, while I'm here Shinichi is in Primary school being eight years old, when I get home -if I haven't wound up body swapping before I do- I'll fix dinner then Shinichi will come home and we'll pretend that nothing has changed. We'll have to make sure that Dad doesn't figure out that Conan is Shinichi but other than that Shinichi and I will act as if we don't both know that all of this is completely weird and that it's not awkward that he's suddenly ten years younger than me.

As weird as it seems to be saying this after that last paragraph, I was beginning to reach the point where all these unusual things are starting to become the norm for me just like it is for the guys. I guess that's a sign of how truly screwed up my life has become.

Finally school ended and after assuring Sonoko one last time that I really was completely fine I headed home to prepare for dinner. It took me a moment to remember that I needed to make three servings since it had been a while since 'Conan' had left us, I found myself thinking that it was a good thing I'd bought extra ingredients around the time that Shinichi -er Conan came home.

"How was school today Conan?" I ask. Calling him Conan mostly out of habit but partly because I know he would want me to. He's always so paranoid about these sorts of things even though he and the other boys have already taken care of the Organization, I don't think he'll ever stop being wary of anyone wearing the color black...

He gave a weary smile, "About how you'd expect, everyone's excited that I'm back, but... well you know how primary school is."

"Yeah, I'm surprised they didn't throw a party for you," I laughed.

"The Shonen Tantei Dan are planing one, I think."

We both laughed at that, though it was a bit strained.

...

What am I supposed to do now?

I never realized that school occupied such a large portion of my life until now, now that I'm not making the regular commute to whatever school I need to I find that my life seems so empty without it. What on Earth does Shiho do, sitting around in the house all day?

I know she doesn't go out, not alone, she's always been paranoid that someone from the organization will recognize her even though Kudo, Kuroba, Hattori, and I have taken care of it... mostly. I guess she must mess around in the downstairs lab, I can't do that though, I wouldn't want to accidentally mess up any experiments that she's set up, I suppose I could try working on perfecting the antidote to Apotoxin but without Shiho here I'm not sure where to start.

I guess I'll just play on the computer a bit.

(approximately twenty minutes 37 seconds - regretfully I don't have my pocket watch so I can't be sure of milliseconds- of playing Solitaire later)

Ugh, what am I doing? This is getting me no where!

Why am I just sitting here? Why is there nothing to do? Is it always like this?

For some reason it was around that point in time that I remembered that I had never taken a shower yesterday, heck I was even wearing the same clothes I'd woken up in. I lift my arm up to my nose and give it a little sniff... ugh, does she ever wash this outfit, I need to change. No, what I really need is a shower...

Right, that's a bad idea. For so many reasons.

Akako-san did say that we'd probably be stable for at least the next few days, so I guess I'm going to have to take a shower eventually but it feels like that would be a violation of privacy if I don't at least ask for Shiho's permission before I take a shower in her body. It was completely fine when we were all guys but now that gender has become a variable...

Wait.

Everyone else had to go to school, so they would have taken showers... right? Surely they wouldn't have gone to school a total mess, so they must have. Am I the only one bothered by this?

I guess Kuroba probably knows the ups and downs of Aoko-kun's body already, but I imagine it'd still be awkward for him. Of course it should be awkward for her as well. As for the others Hattori and Kazuha-kun must have it pretty rough and I guess it must be Ran-kun's luck that she and Kudo switched back because it's certainly not his.

I wonder how it was for Shiho...

I'm probably just over thinking all of this, still, I think I'll wait for Shiho to get here (she'll probably come after school) before I take a shower so I can get her permission. It's not like I'm going anywhere anyway.

* * *

**KS=EC, MR, HS=MS, KK=NA, HH=TK **


	21. It's only natural to be a narcissist

**I'm not going to ramble quite so much as I did last time this time (in case anyone actually reads my bold ranting). You might notice that this chapter is the characters that didn't get the chance to narrate last chapter, I think that makes it fair and helps it seem like the story isn't focused on any one person (on that note sorry if there seems to be a lot of convergence on Shiho, she's very important to the little amount of plot that I have planned so far).  
**

**In this chapter: **** Aoko's curiosity, ****Conan's views on life, Shiho's theory, Heiji's suspicions  
**

**Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review it doesn't matter if it's short or long or if you like the story or not (though I can't imagine anyone getting this far without liking it).**

* * *

**KS=EC, MR, HS=MS, KK=NA, HH=TK**

* * *

...

The lunch bell had rang out it's last chime and within seconds I heard a familiar voice from behind, "I'd never realized that you were such a narcissist, Aoko-san."

I turned in my seat to find Shiho-san (in Hakuba's body of course) looking at me with an amused smile.

"Wha- what do you mean?" was all I could think to reply.

"Well, you've been staring at your own rear end since second period, or maybe longer," She answered still smiling despite her tone sounding cold and analytical, "You must be quite the narcissist."

"Eh? Um... that is... well..." I couldn't think of any way to reply that wouldn't make me sound like a terrible person -in more ways than one.

After all, while I hadn't really been staring on purpose, it was mostly because I had been contemplating whether or not I should flip up Kaito's skirt. It's not like I actually wanted too but I'd have to if I wanted to really be believable in acting as Kaito. So there wasn't really much choice in the matter but that didn't change the fact that I really didn't want to do it.

"Hmm? What is it?" Shiho-san asked, no doubt looking for me to explain why I might be spending most of my school day looking at what used to be my own butt.

I know that she'd probably keep pressing until she gets an answer so I sigh and tell her the truth in the least embarrassing way I can think to, "I'm trying to act like Kaito but I don't want to flip his skirt..."

"Oh? You don't want to know what kind of underwear he'd have you wear? You aren't even the slightest bit curious?" She responded, raising an eyebrow.

"Eh What do you mean?"

She smiled again, a smile that made a chill run down my spine, "Well, naturally since he's the one who dressed you he would put you in whatever he thinks suits you best. He can make you dress however he likes."

However he likes... so then... he's wearing the kinda of underwear he thinks looks good on me? What could that be? Well he's always said he thinks white suits me best but is that really what he thinks? I mean Kaito's never been a very honest person...

The more I thought about it the more curious I became, until finally I'd convinced my self that it would be completely fair to take a peek after all the times that Kaito had done the same. Within moments I'd executed a perfect plan to take a peek under the skirt that would normally be mine, finding myself face to face with a pair of shorts that were enough to hide whatever else was there.

Why hadn't I ever thought of that?

For a fleeting moment I see a victorious smile flash across Kaito's face -my face- before it changes to an angry blush, he shouts, "Bakaito!"

I almost laugh, but then I realize that he's holding a mop -where on Earth did it even come from?- and I take off running.

...

I had thought that I was finally done with all of this.

It's been more than a year now, I thought that I'd never have to be Edogawa Conan ever again. Yet here I am... it just isn't fair.

I sit in the primary school class that I don't even need to bother pretending to pay attention to, the teacher stands by the board doing simple arithmetic as my classmates scribble notes to study later.

This is the third day since I returned to this body. Why am I here?

I should be in high school. I should be eighteen. I should be _me_.

But. I'm. Not.

What's stopping me? Why can't I be 'Kudo Shinichi'? Who was it that decided that I was better off being anyone besides myself? Why!?

I could skip grades. That would at least take care of one of my problems. It would be easy... but that would be too risky.

Even if the other guys an I had managed to get the main part of the organization out of the picture it would have been impossible to take care of it completely. An organization that large, secretive, and organized would be difficult to completely destroy, they probably had plans in place in case they were ever discovered. We managed to find their leader, Anokata, but he probably had several backups in line in case something like that happened... and for all we knew the person we could have just been a front, a person pretending to be their leader in order to hide the real one.

There's no way that I can do anything as risky as skipping grades now. This is already the second time that Edogawa Conan has appeared and come to live with the Mouri's immediately after Kudo Shinichi disappeared... it can't be helped that they know 'Shinichi' is alive because any remaining members will know that I was the one who destroyed the Organization, but I can't do quite as much in this form as I could as a teen detective, they'd take advantage of that.

I guess there's really nothing I can do about it. I just hope that Haibara and Hakuba are able to work out a more permanent antidote soon.

The bell rings signaling the end of the school day and with that I head home, glad that the Shonen Tantei dan have found themselves with fewer 'cases' (at least ones that didn't involve finding missing pets) in the absence of it's two smartest members.

Upon my arrival Ran and I share our usual casual conversation as she begins to cook dinner, it's strained... I don't think our relationship will ever return to being normal ever again. It was bad enough that she'd taken care me for nearly a year and now was having to do it again, the recent addition of the girls to the body swap seems to have been the last push needed to start tearing us apart, or maybe I'm reading this the wrong way... romance has never really been my forte.

I could hear the door opening downstairs, Ojii-san was here, Ran and I immediately made sure to stop talking about anything that would sound suspicious if it were over heard. He was coming up the steps, I could hear him but I heard something else too. Talking, I couldn't really make out what was being said though.

I had turned to face the door as I heard him approach so that I could greet him as per usual when he entered, but then suddenly I found myself instead looking up at Hakuba (or his body anyway). My eyes widen with a vague understanding, I'd been swapped again. I look down and find myself practically swimming in one of Haibara's outfit's complete with lab coat.

"...Eh?"

...

I went home after school, not Saguru's home where I've been living these past three days that I've been in his body, but the professor's house -my home. I did this mostly because I knew how bored Saguru must be throughout the day. Since the first day he's mostly spent his time trying to find a way to improve the antidote to APTX4869, he hasn't really made much progress, but at least he's trying.

He doesn't go outside much, mostly to humor my paranoia (I'll never believe that the four of them were able to completely tear down the organization and I really can't risk being recognized), so when I come I bring scientific equipment that could be useful, things like extra beakers and chemicals that I hadn't been able to buy without a reputation behind me (not that I didn't have one as myself, but seeing as I'm in hiding I can't let it be known).

But I digress, none of that was really relevant anyway.

"How was school?" Saguru asks, nearly as soon as I've entered the house. It still feels strange hearing my voice coming from someone else but I suppose I'll get used to it soon enough, the accent he picked up from his time as Hattori helps a little bit, if he talked the same way I do I'd be more worried about the effects of all this swapping on all of our respective mentalities than I already am.

"About how you would expect," I replied, "Have you made any significant progress?"

" 'Fraid not," He answered, continuing with something like a frustrated laugh, "Ya made one heck of a poison after all."

Well it's not like I'd expected much anyway. I myself wouldn't be making much progress at this point, scientifically there just isn't much that could stand to be improved.

"Ya were a bit later coming here dan ya usually are," He commented as a mere observation, then as comes natural to a detective he proceeded to deduce why it could be that I came late, "More magic lessons?"

Of course that wasn't really a question, he was certain that was the case... as he should be, it was correct after all. I answer anyway, "That's right."

"How're they goin'?"

"Rather difficult," I answered with an unintentional sigh, "Even the most basic premises of magic go against what I believe in as a scientist. It would seem I'm simply not cut out to be a mage."

"What made ya want ta learn magic 'neway? Aside from simple curiosity a'course," He asked, his eyes narrowing a bit to make it clear that he knew I wouldn't have asked to learn if I didn't have at least one other reason.

"APOTOXIN4869," was my response, he looked confused so I elaborated after a brief pause, "Three days ago when Ran-san and Shinichi switched back to their own bodies it was right after the antidote had stopped being effective. I believe that my poison may be having some sort of effect on the phenomena that we're experiencing, it's not much to go on but it's led me to believe that perhaps with out knowing it I'm a mage and that APOTOXIN4869 was a result of a mixture of science and accidental sorcery."

Saguru raised an eyebrow, "Do you have any idea how crazy..."

He trailed off, his face looked pale and he was starting to sweat. Why hadn't I noticed a moment sooner? I muttered a quick curse under my breath, "Speak of the devil."

The antidote I'd taken more than a year ago was wearing off, just three days after Shinichi's is a bit earlier than expected but I'd known it was going to happen soon. The current antidote doesn't give nearly enough warning time before wearing off... though I suppose that's inconsequential at the moment.

"So this is..." Saguru started to say, he'd already doubled over and his speech was becoming more staccato with huffing breaths in between, "... what... it feels... like..."

"Yeah, not the best feeling in the world is it?"

That body would return to being 'Haibara Ai' any moment now. There was nothing we could do besides wait for it to happen, Saguru knew that almost as well as I did.

I unintentionally winced as he began to scream.

My eye's opened as if I had simply blinked. I found myself looking at Shinichi or rather at Edogawa Conan. This wasn't right, why was I here? Suddenly I heard a door creak open and instinctively turned to the door.

I could see Ran's father standing in the doorway, he immediately asked, "Is dinner ready yet? Because I'm starved!"

I look towards the kitchen counter beside me, and try to sound perky as I give a reply in spite of my growing sense of dread, "Just a few more minutes and it'll be done... Dad."

...

Kazuha had been acting weird lately. I mean a kind of weird that I don't think was connected to being in my body, something else was bugging her.

I could tell as much simply by looking at her across the classroom, an act that made me feel odd because I felt attracted to her. I'm sure that sounds extremely narcissistic but I'm just going to chalk it up to me having picked up her emotions when I entered her body just like Hakuba had picked up my accent and Kudo had picked up Kuroba's thief skills... after all if I weren't in this body I'd probably never be attracted to a guy even if it's myself. Ugh, that was such a weird sentence, just forget I even said that.

Where was I again? Right... Something was bugging Kazuha.

I decided the best approach would be to just ask her directly after school, if only to avoid any unnecessary waiting for something that seemed like it must be pretty important.

"Ya've been lookin' pretty down lately, somethin' wrong?" I asked, trying to sound sensitive.

"Well... No, it's nothing."

Obviously there's something. You can't hide anything from me Kazuha! Have you forgotten that I'm a genius detective? Even if I'm not in my own body I'm still the Great Detective of the West!

"Whatever it is ya kin tell me ya know," I replied, making it clear that I was sure something was up.

She looked away for a moment as if deciding what to say before she finally gave a somewhat exasperated sigh, "Every night since I've been in your body I've had dese weird dreams where I'm talkin' ta Shinichi-kun, but de person `e's talkin' to isn't me... `nd in de dreams `e does somethin' dangerous ta protect me, but den `e winds up in da hospital..."

"Dat's what's got ya worried?" I reply, unsure how something so simple could be a problem.

"Yeah... I guess I'm jus' worryin' over nothin', You and de other guys must 'ave bad dreams all de time with all da weird stuff ya've been through, I must just be havin' dese dreams a'cause I'm in yer body," Kazuha stated, a faint smile flickers at the edges of her mouth, "Dey felt really real but in de end dey're jus' dreams."

Dreams would normally feel real while you're having them unless it's a lucid dream

"Yeah it's not like either a' us kin see de future `er nethin' so wat else could dey be?"

Or so I said, but that might not be entirely true. After all it'd happened before, not very often but I've had my dreams come true before. Kudo only survived getting stabbed the first time he came to Osaka because I loaned him the charm Kazuha made for me, but I'd only loaned it to him because I'd dreamed he'd get stabbed. Are these dreams Kazuha's having like that?

"hmm? What's wit' dat serious face, it's just a bunch of bad dreams... Right?"

"Yeah, a' course, but maybe ya should make a protective charm for him, jus' in case. He's probably gonna get 'imself in a ton 'a weird situations now dat he's stuck in chibi form again," I reply, trying to justify my sudden growing sense of worry.

She smiles, "I'll do dat den, a charm ta keep murders from jus' poppin' up 'round 'im."

Well... at least Kazuha's cheered up.

* * *

**MR=TK=HH=NA=HS=EC=HA=MR KK=KK  
**


End file.
